


A Birthday with Our Dad

by snarlinger



Category: Homestuck, Original Work
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen, Green Sun (Homestuck), Homophobic Language, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, LGBTQ Character, LGBTQ Themes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-15
Updated: 2018-06-19
Packaged: 2019-05-21 18:51:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 24
Words: 53,248
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14920965
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/snarlinger/pseuds/snarlinger
Summary: Under the Lord's ire, two near-adults explore a haunted Victorian manor in South Australia to reconnect with their past, while a recently emigrated Victorian family struggles to cope with the death of a daughter under the gaze of the green sun.A story of nostalgia, identity, and spooky ghosts.





	1. I

# The Haunting of the Brimmingstoke Bluff

## I  
18--

> ‘Here on the summit of the hill, every morning from daylight until sun sunk, did we sweep the horizon, in hope of seeing a sail.’

Mrs Helen Morris, daughter of Sir Charles Taylor and husband to the wealthy Joseph Morris, sits upright, quite puzzled, on a velvet chair in the drawing room of her estate. Between the bejewelled fingers of her right hand she clasps tightly a half-filled wine glass, her last digit struck out as if to catch the wind. She is afraid, not for her life, but for her surroundings.

‘Yes!’ she exclaims with a tremor in her voice, as if her cry can be heard by a listening ear on the wall of this very room. She is alone, you see, and while this is not an irregular occurrence for most, Mrs Morris is one accustomed to people, whether it to be friends or family or servants, surrounding her frail figure at all hours of every day. Companionship, for her, is the lifeblood of one’s very existence; the bread and butter for any meal; the rosy to a child’s cheek.

This is, however, not a regular day. To-day, her eyes stare out into the courtyard where the oaks flutter and blush under the green sun’s vibrant gaze, and she sees not a settle under a willow tree but white noise and a humming. She hears, as her earlobes curl in onto themselves, the shape of the ocean waves and an unkempt sailor, mouthing a merry tune to himself as he caresses gently the wheel of the stern of his sailing ship. She is frothing at the mouth.

‘Yes!’ she yells again, but this time, as if something within her is awoken by the word, her eyes stop rolling impossibly in their sockets and she collapses into the chair. It was as if she was possessed by the spirit of her wine, and that to be exorcised some sort of feverish agreement was required of her. Jest of Mrs Morris’ supernatural behaviour may appear inexcusably disrespectful to our reader, but they may consider by the end of this haunting that Mrs Morris is not so puritan a lady as she considers herself to be.

‘Joseph?’ she shouts, but not un-ladylike. ‘Darling?’

A pause, and she tastes her drink.

‘Yes?’ calls her husband. ‘Were you calling earlier? Must I come down?’

‘No, no,’ she replies. ‘I was thinking of your offer.’

Another pause, more akin to a hesitation. ‘Yes?’

‘I do agree, at last. We should move out of here within the week if it is not such a messy business.’

‘Ah, Helen! You have come around. I believe I will be down there, just allow me a moment.’

She smiles, and returns to her wine. Over the cusp of her glass she watches the streaming willow leaves flutter over the seat below, and thinks that she might have them trimmed before they make their leave.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for clicking. Regardless of how much you read, critique is very, very appreciated.


	2. I

# a birthday with our dad

## 1  
2017

| Hey, Jerry. You still alive? | 7:36PM  
---|---|---  
| Joyce? Why are you messaging me? Where have you been? | 7:39PM  
| Still in the city with my shitty foster family.  
How've you been, dude? It's been ages. | 7:39PM  
| Yeah, like a solid year. I thought you forgot about me | 7:40PM  
| Didn't forget. | 7:40PM  
| Well, okay.  
I've been alright  
Made some new friends, we play games | 7:41PM  
| That's cool, dude. | 7:41PM  
| Why are you messaging me? | 7:42PM  
| Okay, so, you know how we used to go explore places at night? Like the old health co-op? And the school? Well I found another one. | 7:42PM  
| What? | 7:42PM  
  
It was early evening under the green sun. The city, a near skyscraper-less scene spread against the south coast, was lit spectacularly by its glow. Lime-shaded clouds split the sky, made tears in the air above; it appeared, cosmically, as if an algae-powered railway lamp was conducted by its shunter, his face and beard made out of cloud and his eyes, the stars.

There was a sedan driving between his legs along the highway into town. It wouldn’t be a long drive. Once the city had been far, far from the town of Brimmingstoke, but once it had climbed out of the sea and grown feet, once-plain had become plane and once-occupied opportunity was sundered.

“Once,” said Joyce, who was laying in the passenger seat, “I walked the entire highway into town just to get away from them for a couple hours.”

Jerry directed his eyes away from the road for a moment to say, “Really?”

“Yeah. They’re fucking poisonous. They think they’re saviours, martyrs—is that the right word?”

“I dunno.”

“They think they’re so kind, and innocent, and _generous_ for raising an Aboriginal kid in their own home. It’s like, you hear about rich white women in America buying up African children like they’re exotic goddamn chihuahuas and you think: that’s so far away, that’s Americans being American.”

“But it’s happened to you.”

“Yeah! That’s my reality right now, and it’s kind of a situation. Because there’s no choice in this damn system.”

“What are they doing to you? Like, in terms of fake generosity?”

She sat up. “You should’ve seen them, first day. Open arms, happy smiles, like I was twelve-years old. And then, anytime I do something disagreeable you know in their heads they want to say, ‘We took you in, so you play by our rules.’” Jerry took a right turn, twisting from the peachy plots of dry grass and tree trunks next to the highway, fenced off to keep the trespassers out of whoever’s land, the city distant but still well in view—and down, down onto the road of cracked overgrowth. “It’s just as much fake generosity as it is ignorant—they don’t understand me, or how my family was, or what I was dealing with, but they think they do because I come from the dingy drug town on the outskirts of the city.”

It was the road into Brimmingstoke, and could have arguably been classified as ‘off the beaten path’ if there wasn’t a large rounded sign, green, displaying its name and ‘EXIT’, diagonal arrow, painted below.

Jerry let out the clutch and the sedan trundled down, low eucalypt leaves rustling its shiny shell as if cradling it, and suddenly, the trees dispersed, and the road stabilised. The sky was a neat gradient, the clouds sparse, and the road under their suspended feet dry and lacking. On either side were low hills, just barely eye-level, shrouding whatever lay beyond; you’d expect to fall into some unrendered void if you dared step over them.

“Where are we headed?” asked Jerry.

“Just get onto main road and I’ll direct you from there.”

They were stopped at a railway crossing, the lights flashing alternately, the mechanical bell ringing its last few dings through the muffle of the windscreen. It seemed that a train had just passed through.

“We’re going to east suburbs, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Outskirts?”

“No, actually. Smack-dab in the middle.”

Jerry frowned and drove over the tracks. “Really?”

“I know, right? Sounds like something you’d have known about?”

“An old Victorian mansion in the middle of east-side. I almost don’t believe you.”

“Here, check this out.” She passed him her phone and he held it with a stray hand. It was opened onto a screenshot of a Google Maps satellite view, displaying a house—angular, and large compared to the others surrounding it—placed neatly at the end of a cul-de-sac. Jerry slowed down, looked at the image for a moment, and squinted.

“That’s… Right.” He looked back to the road, frowning deeper. “I can’t remember if I’ve ever even been on that street.”

“It was the one where Charlie used to live, remember? The kid who overdosed, like, eighth grade.”

“Oh. Oh yeah, wow. I went to his house once in primary school.”

“Really? What was it like?”

“Uh, well,” he said, “the house was messy, just boxes and dirty plates and trash bags everywhere. The parents might have been drunk or on something, but I was a kid, so. They were nice, anyway.” He took a right turn ‘round a red-graffitied lamppost onto main street. “I remember we fixed their broken washing machine.”

“Did the parents get you to do it?”

“Oh, no, uh—we just fixed it.”

“Oh.”

Federation-style buildings greeted them on either side, all old—really old—and unlike some other towns, they weren’t paired against modern, sleeker buildings. It was all arches and stiffly angled brick roofs, hardware stores, abandoned stores, a failing cafe. It felt dry, as if the sun itself had leeched upon the town, stolen its energy, evaporated it—and the clouds had long since drifted away.

There were still people about. To the west was an elderly lady being helped into a car by a younger woman, and to the east—

Joyce pitched her head forward. “Is that Lachie?”

“Yep.”

Lachie was a near-adult leaning on a navy green pipe and nearing the end of his cigarette.

“Damn! I haven’t seen him in ages! Can we pull over?”

Jerry kept driving, and Lachie disappeared into the rear-view mirror.

Joyce frowned. “Uh, is that a no, then?”

“Yeah. It’s Lachie.”

“Yeah. And?”

He breathed out a short breath and rubbed his tongue over his front teeth. “It’s Lachie. As in, “faggot shag”, Lachie.”

“Fa—? Oh. Oh yeah, right.” She rubbed her nose.

There was a moment’s pause as Jerry turned left toward the east of town.

“Did you forget that, too?” he said quietly.

“What? Jerry, dude. I just forgot about Lachie, that’s all.”

“Alright.”

“And I didn’t _forget_ , alright? Again, look—” she sighed and wiped her cheekbone with a finger “—I’m sorry I didn’t message for a while, okay? But you’re taking it too far. You said so yourself—I don’t know why you’re bringing it up again.”

“Because—” He stopped himself. He wanted to punch the steering wheel. “Okay,” he said, fingers tightening. “You’re right. I’m sorry. I’ll try not to bring it up again.”

They drove along for another half-minute, nearing the outskirts of the east-side suburbs. They passed the old town hall, graffitied, again, with red spray, depicting kingly tags and faded stars.

Joyce cleared her throat. “So. You met any guys?”

“No.”

On the pavement next to the road jogging by at their sides, a bird swooped up from a clawed tree to rest on a lamppost.

Jerry sighed. “Okay, sort of.”

“Oooh,” she said. Flicked back a hair strand.

“But, like—”

“Oooh!” she cried.

“Oh my god,” he smiled, and braced himself.

“Ohmigod!” she shrieked. Jerry laughed a horse’s laugh, an almost whiplash-inducing affair on his neck after the tension of fifteen seconds ago.

“I forgot—”

“What’s he like!” she squealed. “Tell mee!?”

“I forgot about your shitty sorority impression,” he said between peals of laughter.

“I would make the best cheerleader.”

“Oh, Christ.” He shook his head, giggled a bit more, and his fingers were loose again. “Okay, okay. So—”

 

*

 

The green sun set over east-side. Rays of light toppled through the gaps between houses and hit the asphalt with a crack, then launched themselves up into the air like a flock of crazed parakeets. As if pulled by some gravitational force they spun ‘round and ‘round and came spiralling down about the manor at the end of the street, shedding a hazy lime glow into the window at its front.

There was the rumbling of the second-hand sedan 250 metres away, jostling along a curling road, taking left, then left, then right…

“So—exploring an abandoned old mansion,” said Jerry, fingers tapping on the wheel. “Can’t say I’m not nervous.”

“Lost your touch?”

Jerry smiled. “Definitely. It’s been a while.”

The sedan bounced, its door frames rattled, and the mansion came into view. It was nestled away beyond a large iron-lace gate, chained. Its front window was like an eye, huge and round, segmented by an asterisk frame and glowing fluorescently in the sunlight.

Jerry’s gaze hesitated away from the mansion for a moment, then returned to look over the steering wheel. “It really is great to see you.”

“The same, Jerry,” she smiled, tapping his shoulder.

The road lay unmoving as the sedan rolled up to the estate. With a splutter it turned cold, and the evening blew in a leafy kiss through the rubber seals of its doors.

“I got the backpack,” said Jerry.

“Good!” she replied, after a moment.

He reached into the back and examined, for the third time that night, the contents of his bag. Torch, rope, phone, other torch, swiss army knife, regular knife, bolt-cutters… “You did bring pepper spray?”

“Oh. No, I forgot. We really won’t need it though.”

“You sure? If there’s squatters—”

“Yeeep,” she said, stepping out of the car. Jerry followed suit.

The street was quiet except for Jerry’s car and their chatter. Most of its residents were out on the town, or the city more likely, on a Friday night. Those who weren’t were in, watching primetime television at four corners of the house, or sleeping away an afternoon of alcohol, or weed; something prescribed; something hard. _This_ was Brimmingstoke: really too fancy and British a name for most of the kind who lived here, Joyce thought. Her tone wasn’t much of malice: she used to be one of them, after all—basically still was. But it had been a while since she felt it.

Joyce and Jerry, two very-nearly adults—two former good friends—stood before the estate with their fists in their hoodie-pockets and a backpack full of everything unnecessary, watching as the breeze flowed between them. Jerry broke his focus to look toward his friend, and a shadow moved in one of the mansion’s second-floor windows.

“What do you do when there’s squatters again?” he asked lopsidedly. “Run, give up?”

She looked over, something in her eyes. “You’d like that, scaredy-cat. No—remember the hospitality we got at the health co-op?” Her face half-vanished into her hood. “And don’t say ‘you’. This was and will continue to be a ‘we’ thing. Hand me the bolt-cutters?”

A pressure, and then, _snap!_ A chain-link dangled to the left.

“I wonder how many people have broken in here,” said Jerry, squeezing his nose through the bars.

“Well the lock and chain aren’t rusty.”

He came up for air and examined them with a faux magnifying glass. “So they aren’t. Must be a hotspot then. Or a recent offender.”

“Or,” breathed Joyce, “there’s someone who’s replacing them, year after year…”

“Ooo.”

“…he skulks out of the woodshed, chains dragging—”

“He?”

“ _They_ skulk out of the woodshed, chains—”

“Pronouns. Spooky.” He dipped his nose back into the fence.

“Damn you,” she said, snapping the bolt cutter at his sleeve.

 _Snap! Ding-a-ling!_ , the first chain echoed. A sequence of barks called out from a backyard in response.

“Loud,” observed Jerry.

Joyce prepared for another squeeze.

“Do you think maybe we should climb the fence instead? Be all secret delinquent instead of loud, obvious delinquent?”

“Can’t be bothered.”

The other chain fell to the ground, suitably snapped, and Joyce pushed the iron-lace gate open. Jerry assumed a cringing squeak, but was pleased to hear a well-oiled nothing. There was still the dog-barking, but after a moment and a louder-than-chains exclamation from its apparent owner, it quit.

Joyce moved ahead, but Jerry hesitated, perched over the backpack and rummaged through it again. Swiss-army knife, torch, other knife…

She stared in semi-amusement.

“How nervous _are_ you?” she asked, and knelt beside him. He stopped, began zipping it up. “This is meant to be fun, you know.”

He laughed. “I’m…” Sighed. “I dunno. I’m pretty nervous, I guess.”

“You know, if you’re _really_ not up for it, we could just go hang at your place, get pizza. Do this another time, y’know?”

Jerry smiled. “Yeah. But, um…” He stood, leaving the bag on the ground. “I’m just… I dunno.”

“You dunno?”

“Yeah.”

The sun bored into their sides, casting shadows the lengths of tapeworms through the bars and across the estate grounds. Its glare was algae and lemon-lime swirl on the horizon.

“It’s just weird seeing you again, I guess. I don’t know.” His thumbs hooked into his jean pockets and he dipped his neck to the side. “I guess it’s just weird to hang out with someone like this. It’s not something I do that often anymore.”

“Aw, really?”

“Yeah. I don’t know how to act.”

“Awww.” She stood up, sliding the bag across her back. “Do we need to hug again?”

“No, no,” he chuckled, “I’m good. It’ll just take a bit of getting used to, I guess.”

“Well,” said Joyce, “you’re doing fine, if that’s any help. What say we explore the site, get some pizza afterwards? I know a 24-hour place in the city.”

Jerry smiled—“Sounds good.”—and off they went through the open gate.

If the sign hanging under the archway hadn’t long since rotted away, they would have been welcomed to the _Morris Estate_. Built sometime in the mid-1800s when British emigrants had thoroughly settled and begun establishing families, it was home to Protector of Aborigines Joseph Morris, his wife and their two kids, until their sudden disappearance not one year later. The house was unaffectionately named the _Brimmingstoke Bluff_ by locals, not because of its placement on a ridge (it was basically flat plane for miles out) but because of Morris’s unfulfilled promise of assimilating the local Aboriginal community by the end of his term. Now, with the manor falling apart by every brick of its intricate architecture, some say his ghost still haunts its halls, exerting a malevolent aura of false political ideal.

“Any of that ring a bell?” asked Joyce.

“Sort of. I think I remember the name, but my memory’s not entirely clear on the ghost part.”

“Yeah, I may have twisted the truth a little bit there.”

Jerry laughed. “What, are you trying to make me even more worried?”

“Maybe. But really,” she said, “Morris and his picket-fence family probably just got up and moved to more lucrative prospects. Maybe a gold rush.”

“That’s a bit more reasonable than ‘ghost’. You would’ve been all about that a couple years ago.”

“Yeah. I’ve grown a bit since my ghost hunting days.”

It wasn’t the complete truth. Seeing this estate here, with the pocked grass, the overgrown path, the knotted trees and a spiked iron fence so classically _evil_ , it was impossible not to draw supernatural connections from the stories of her childhood. Her dad would read _Goosebumps_ to her before bed with only a torch for light, his eyes and mouth strung into a tight grimace when it was fun to be scared and a loose smile when it wasn’t. She remembered one about two kids who played a board game that foreshadowed their deaths; she remembered crying into his chest one night when they were revealed to be ghosts the entire time.

She was a kid, okay?

Jerry was walking slightly behind, slightly slower, than the graceful steps of the girl in front. He thought about the bag, about the potential of life inside the mansion. The thought of someone lying in there with a sleeping bag and a bottle of escape at their side: it shook him, a little. He was still getting back into the swing of things, evidently, but come to think of it, he couldn’t remember what made this whole thing special to him back then. He reasoned with himself that it was just one of those things you had to _do_ to enjoy—thinking about your gripes with it on the sidelines wasn’t much help.

This is for us, not her, he thought, and his inner voice ruled it as justified.

They reached the porch. The house, in all its architectural glory, gazed down on them.

It was a Victorian mansion, that was certain—all fine brush strokes of vertical trim; ridged gableboards; smooth spires slipping upward to what would otherwise be the midday sun. There was something red-brick and glass-pane at its left side that pushed deeper into the trees, and at the height of the house, framed by the spires, reached a dominant arched roof that peeked just below the limits of their perception.

The eye, again.

“I don’t know if you realised,” said Jerry, “but it’s not exactly falling apart, either.”

He stepped up onto the porch, the wooden boards silent under his shoes. It extended sharply prior to the right set of curtained windows, and encompassed those on the left. There was a rocking chair next to the door.

He examined one of the columns, felt the intricate etchings with the tip of his finger. They were ship-wheels and water, tinted with what looked like tin-rust. “Is this, like, pirate imagery?”

Joyce pulled up to the door. “Seems like it, yeah.”

“Is that a Victorian thing?”

“I dunno!” she said hurriedly. “Can we go in now? I’m excited.”

“Oh, yeah.”

She grinned back at him, shook her hand as if to calm it, then twisted and pushed on the doorknob. The door crept open, teasing an evocative little shadow of interior. Joyce held it there as if to savour the sight.

“Creeaaak,” she said. “Why is nothing making noise around here?”

“Yeah, same with the gate. You’d actually think somebody’s doing upkeep on this place.”

“Yeah.” She paused for a moment, looked back across the estate grounds. “ _Who_ though? Does anyone actually care?”

“Maybe someone like you?”

“What?” she said, head turning.

“No, I mean like,” he stammered, “someone _else_ in this town who cares about its weird little historical places.”

“Oh.” Then after a moment, the subject apparently changed, she focused again on the door. With a hand, she swung it back and forth to try and provoke a sound, but all she earned was a soft _bump!_ as it finished its arc against the adjacent wall. “I just want creaky shit,” she said. “I like creaky shit.”

But her disappointment wasn’t to last—the sight of the mansion interior came into view. She dashed inside, the door slowly pulling closed behind her.

“Hey!” said Jerry. He pulled his numbed hands out of his coat-pockets and stalked through in pursuit. There was the vestibule, first—dark, open and thin—but beyond that, in a room much wider, beheld Joyce, who held a hand at her heart and curled fingers at her teeth.

It was the reception hall, and it was grand, not in scope, but in beauty. It was, like the manor itself, a painting: shades of deep earth and dark velvet reflecting gradients of sunlight and shadow, framed in portraits, and frills, and high china. It felt close—lived-in—living, almost; there was a smell in the air that wasn’t must, or rot, or anything abandoned. It was the smell like a worn shoe that was lacquered and re-threaded at the seams.

There was a staircase at its far centre. It was a carpeted affair pointing to a second-floor landing of banisters and darkness. The staircase itself was framed: two whitened busts depicting what were most likely either Greek gods or French kings stood guard. At their east and west emptied two corridors that curled ‘round and conjoined behind the stairs, and further across were two sets of double-doors, each leading to the curtained rooms the two saw outside.

But, as was most fazing to Joyce, there was no partly collapsed roof unable to shield them from the elements. The door didn’t close behind them in a deafening slam. There were no cobwebs curling about the hanging chandelier, because the chandelier, instead, had fallen. The eye that held its gaze above the entrance streamed in that hot light of the green sun, and in the middle of the glow, what once was a whirlpool rug of swirling teal frills was now the wreck of that felled thing: the mangle, now, of a huge, dead spider, spinning shards of emerald into the dark corners of the hall. It was only the soft pads of their footsteps on the floorboards as the two approached, hearts in sync.

“Holy shit,” she said, breaking the silence. Her voice didn’t echo. “Holy shit!” She ran around the chandelier with her thumbs under the bag-straps, gleamed at the double-doors, the busts, the portraits and paintings. She ran around and behind the carpeted stair. “There’s a door back here!” she exclaimed. “Jerry! There’s a door!” Came back around, practically skipping. “I didn’t know there’d be a door!”

“Yeah,” he muttered.

“I wanna go up there. Up the stairs,” she said. “Like damn. Those are some hot shadows.”

“Were you, um—” he played nervously with his bottom lip “—were you sure this place was abandoned?”

“Uh-huh. These doors have those weird markings, too, Jerry. Pirate wheels. Or ship-wheels, or whatever.”

“Joyce, I’m being serious,” said Jerry. “This doesn’t look like an abandoned mansion. It looks, like, _lived-in_.”

She groaned, stood up from her crouched analysis of the wall-trim. “Are you seriously that nervous that you’re making up weird conspiracies about an obviously abandoned old mansion?”

“I’m just saying—”

“Does this chandelier look lived-in to you, Jerry?” she asked. “Would you, the present owner of a one-hundred-year-old mansion, keep a spiky wrecked chandelier in your lobby to prick at the legs of your visitors?”

“Well, no,” he admitted.

“Yeah, exactly. I’m sure this is just—y’know—an architectural thing. You know architecture. You were an architect at one point.”

“I did like a term of CAD in high school.”

“Yeah, that’s all you need.”

“Yeah, that’s _all_ I need.”

“Yeah!” she smirked. “And I’m sure late-Victorian architecture was super strong and crazy advanced. Like the Egyptian pyramids.”

“Okay, Joyce.”

“Though I finally caved and watched one of those Egyptian conspiracy documentaries and—”

“Okay, okay!” he surrendered. “I’m convinced.”

“What? It was interesting.”

“You could go for hours thinking aloud about a flat earth documentary, Joyce.”

“Okay—okay, yeah.” She shook out her hands. “I think maybe I’m just really excited.”

“Yeah,” he laughed, “maybe.”

She grinned.

There was quiet, for a while, as they drank in the atmosphere of the hall. The green sun now was nearing its final push into the depths of the horizon, and accordingly, those shards of the emerald eye had shifted. It felt less like the green sun was descending, and more like the manor itself was rising: an elevator, taking off from its foundations, ascending up, up, up high—deep into the cloud.

Joyce turned back to him as he gazed down at the arms of the spider. Swallowed.

“I missed this, y’know. What we have here.”

Her words hung in the space, close in the streams of the once-midday light. Soon, it would be gone; and the dog would start up again at an absurd hour; and the four corners would turn dark. There would be flashing lights and police sirens spearing the night.

He looked at her. Recognised something.

“Yeah. The same, Joyce.”

And he meant it.

They broke into laughter, stepped carefully ‘round the chandelier, and wandered off.


	3. 2

## 2

“So,” asked Jerry, “where to?”

The double doors leading east were of a bluer tinge compared to the green of the west, and like the trim on the porch columns, carved upon their squarely bevelled lengths were images of the sailor’s sea. There was a clunking groan as the two turned the knobs, sounding something akin to a heavy lever, and as the doors slid open they let out a gasp of dead air.

It was a dining room, and it was—not unlike the reception hall—an intricate ornation of deep earth and cordovan, from the floor, to the wallpaper, to the clothed dining table extending from the octagonal walls at its right side to another set of double doors at its left. The room was, of course, darkness for them in this moment, spoilt only by the emerald shards of the reception spider in the other room. Another hung above, mostly shrouded in the current darkness. It was navy blue in whole. It had not fallen, but its chain was growing weak.

A _click!_ and an unfurling of light that warded off the dim dark. Dust particles danced.

“Looks like a dining room,” observed Joyce. Her torchlight shone over the cabinets, lamps, ornaments, mirrors—across to the octagonal wall. “Trash curtains.”

“You’re right,” he dejected, shaking his head. He switched off the flashlight. “Well, let’s go.”

“Mansion ruined. Bye-bye.”

He switched it back on. “What’s so trash?—Oh, I think this setting’s brighter, actually.”

“They’re just… blue, y’know?” Jerry played with the light. “You’d expect some old like grandma flower pattern, at least.” She moved to the curtains, parted them. A lime slice of sunlight carved its way in on an oven mitt.

“I guess it’s going by the nautical thing they have going here, right? Which doesn’t seem all that Victorian, really, but…”

Joyce didn’t respond. She was looking out the window, her face basked by the sweet lime, her eyes focused at something out in the front yard.

“Trash,” she concluded, closing the curtains. “Whatcha looking at?” Jerry held a vase between his fingers. “A vase.”

“A shrewd observation.”

“A smartass.”

“Trash vase.”

“Trash vase.”

“No, but really,” he smirked, “there’s a name or something on the bottom, but I can’t really see.”

He handed it over to Joyce, who looked at the bottom and frowned. “Um, I can see that clearly.”

“Oh, really?”

“Are you going blind? Or are blind but aren’t telling me?”

“Don’t think so. But I mean, I haven’t gone to the optometrist in like a decade, so.”

She frowned some more, leaned a hand on the wallpaper. “Man. It’s all that computer use. All that screenlight. All that _gaming_.”

“I take breaks. The twenny-twenny-twenny thing.”

“An extreme gamer must take some extreme breaks.”

“What does it say, anyway?”

She held the vase up to the flashlight. The lettering was faded ink, written in a cursive so flourished it was difficult to read. “Let’s see

_A gift, to the affection of my adolescence: for whose beauty even the spring flowers of Mr. Walsh's garden do not match.  
– J_

here…” She read it out to him and handed it back. “Looks like it’s by Mr. M. himself.”

“That’s sweet. Who do you reckon Walsh is?”

“A neighbour, maybe? I can’t imagine a reference to friendly neighbour Mr. Walsh down the street being all that romantic, though.”

“Victorians were weird. I’m pretty sure raising an eyebrow over a cup of tea was considered a lewd gesture back then.”

“ _I_ don’t think you give enough credit to the Victorians, myself.”

“Why? What’s so great about them?”

“Well—they gave us cool haunted houses, didn’t they? Like this one?”

“Haunted, huh?”

“Not that I’m still into _ghosts_ or anything.”

“Alright, alright,” he palmed.

He laid the vase on the sideboard, noting, strangely, that the clean circle it came from was surrounded by only a thin layer of dust.

Joyce motioned to the dining table. “Can we…?”

They both sat at opposite ends, Joyce’s elbows on the tablecloth and Jerry’s arms at his lap. The curtain was still parted slightly into a slit; outside, the green sun had lowered further, so the verdant streak didn’t quite reach the end of the table.

“This is good,” she said.

“Yeah.”

“I’ve always wanted to do this,” said Joyce, her voice raised slightly so Jerry could hear. “Sit at a huge table, y’know, like a king.”

“You don’t have to raise your voice, I can hear you clearly.”

“And say,” Joyce exclaimed, “y’know, ‘pass the glazed turkey’, and get a really annoyed look from my distant wife.”

“Why are you the husband in this situation?”

“Because kings are cool!” she boomed.

Jerry flung his hands up, paranoid. “Christ! You know if this place actually isn’t abandoned we’re screwed.”

“Either that or like a Shrek 3 dinner situation. That’s some wholesome interracial marriagal—maridal—some awkward shit, basically.”

Jerry screwed his eyes. “Shrek 3?” he questioned, laid his arms on the tablecloth.

“Yeah, they made a third one, it was pretty shit.”

“That was in Shrek 2.”

“Huh?”

“Also, it’s Shrek _the Third_. Get your Shreks checked, bro.”

“Oh, sorry _dude_ , didn’t realise you were a Shrek historian. I’ll watch myself next time.”

“Yeah. Yeah.”

 

*

 

“Already told you. I would scream,” she replied.

“No you wouldn’t.”

“I would. I would very much scream.”

“You’d be loving it, though. Yeah? Like, if a door you didn’t see behind a staircase can like make your day—”

She scoffed.

“—then an actual poltergeist, surely—”

“You’re comparing me seeing a weird door to me seeing an actual spirit tethered between the afterlife and the mortal realm.”

“You get what I mean.”

“Well…” She sighed. “Like, I _would_ be excited, y’know? But you have to scream. You can’t not scream at a ghost, Jerry—it’s simply not possible. You are morally obligated.”

“So you’d scream out of necessity, then.”

“I guess.”

“And then you’d get excited.”

“Depends if the ghost wants to kill me or not.”

“But you’d still totally get excited if the ghost wanted to kill you!”

“Well, I guess.”

He groaned and clawed his hands over his face.

Joyce laughed. “What are you _even_ getting frustrated about right now?”

“It’s just—how do you not know?”

“Well I’ve never come face to face with an honest-to-god ghost now have I Jerry!”

“Christ,” he whimpered. “I really need to stop bringing this up.”

“You really do.”

The laundry was wide, low, and sparse compared to the dining room. There were no windows, meaning that what was left—a crank wringer, two washtubs, a dolly and a scattered stack of washboards—were stamped into absolute darkness on the ceramic floor. The two pulled on the double doors leading in (an extravagant affair for such a dingy room) and pointed their flashlights inside.

“Hey—this looks pretty abandoned,” she said. “Doesn’t it?”

“Yeah,” he sighed. “Yeah, I guess it does.”

Jerry swung his flashlight up to the ceiling, illuminating spider webs spun about the rafters and a network of wooden poles extended between them. As he stepped inside, his sneakers crunched on a crumbling section of floor tile.

“What do you think all this stuff was used for?” he asked.

“Dunno. Laundry, probably.” She sniffed. The room smelt like mildew and unburnished metal, to her nose. “You don’t really see Victorian laundries in media, so I don’t have a frame of reference.—Probably shouldn’t touch that.”

“Oh yeah, what’s the saying again? Take photos, leave only footprints?”

“Yeah, basically—”

“Oh! We were all up on that vase before weren’t we?”

“You can still touch stuff, you just, y’know, you gotta be careful about it. That vase was ceramic, so it probably won’t break apart in our fingers but, this table is all mouldy and damp, so it could just slough away if it was wanting to.”

“Right.”

There was a single set of steps leading up to a single shadowed door at the laundry’s end. Blurry with mould and termite-bitten in the light, Jerry reached for it, almost had second thoughts—then reached again and pushed.

There was a soft shuffle of wood and the door collapsed in on its hinge.

“Hmmm,” he drew out. “Damn.”

“Oh no!”

“Yeah, sorry.”

“No, the smell!” She was pinching her nose. “Oh God!”

“What?” He sniffed. “What smell?”

“You don’t smell that?”

“What? No?”

“This room.” She stepped inside. “Smells like rotting shit.”

“Wha—” He shook his head, incredulous, and stepped after her onto the linoleum. “It smells like all the other rooms. Like, musty, and a bit metallic.”

“Are you nose-blind? Is it possible to be nose-blind?”

There was muffled music from her pocket.

“Oh Jesus—” she said. She stuck her flashlight under her armpit and pulled out her phone. A tune escaped, gnarled and gnashing, out the confines of its speaker-slit. It wasn’t a generic, soothing marimba; it was an obscure hyper-electronica melody way down the list that sounded like a hundred Casio synthesisers, an unpaid intern and a piccolo were thrown—altogether now—into the open maw of a panting woodchipper.

She groaned and slapped the phone to her ear. “Hi, Julia,” she nasaled. “One second.” She pulled it away and talked to Jerry, not bothering to pull her hand from her nose to hold over the microphone. “It’s the foster mum. I gotta take this.” She motioned to a set of double doors behind her. “Keep exploring though, I’ll be back in like a literal second.—D’you pack any pegs?” she said as an afterthought.

“Oh. No,” he said.

She groaned, again, held the phone back at her ear with a shoulder-blade. “Hello again.—Yep, the pizza delivery guy knocked me in the nose.—No, _really_.” The door fumbled closed behind her with a soft swish. “No, I’m not just pinching it,” came her voice, not all that muffled through the wood bevel, “I’m not a child, Julia.”

And Jerry was alone.

He looked about himself, swinging the flashlight lethargically.

“A kitchen,” he mumbled.

It was a kitchen. It was old, cramped, messy, and it was a kitchen. Jerry blamed the cramp and the mess internally on archaic Victorian standards, but in reality, this room generally wouldn’t have been considered to par even a hundred years ago. It was four rooms smashed into one: a kitchen, a scullery, and—beyond tarnished doors along the walls—two small walk-in-closet-like features acting as a storeroom and larder. It was pretending all these things at once—both for cooking and for washing; both for fresh and for dry—and so it mustn’t have served any purpose particularly well.

Jerry didn’t exactly feel like exploring. Joyce handled that part usually, and she was good at what she enjoyed. But it appeared, then, as if the manor had chosen for him. One of the doors was already partly opened, curling a seeming draft about his bare hands.

He didn’t want the door to melt like brown, running water down his fingers, so he was careful this time. The door rattled the rest of the way open, still without a creak.

 _A pantry_ , he thought.

It was the storeroom. Home to dry food—biscuits, spices, carbohydrates—home to dry utensils, dry tools. Perhaps it was the split and moulded containers of food that produced the smell Jerry’s nose was blind to—but that wasn’t what caught his attention. His eyes, lit in the otherwise shadow by a shard of blue light radiating from the crack of a trapdoor, squinted.

“And now for the main course:” squeaked Joyce, “ _you_!” She held a butter-knife and made faux slicing motions with her hand. “Hyah! Hyah! D’you miss me? What are you looking at?”

“A pantry,” he said.

“It’s a storeroom.”

“Well, whatever. Do you see that?”

“See what?” She edged further to get a closer look—but then she recoiled, twisted and coughed awkwardly under her hand. “Oh-h-h, fuck,” she croaked. “It’s so bad, dude. It smells like plastic now.”

He looked over to her eventually to ask if she was kidding, and then he turned, and looked back. The light was gone.

“Not kidding!” she pressed. “I would be accusing you, honestly, if it was even remotely possible to ignore the smell in here. This—” she coughs again, shakes her head “—can we just move on already?”

He nodded.

They slipped through those double doors, entering into a small antechamber themed similarly to the entrance hall. There were side-tables with mirrors and china, paintings of countryside, and doors all ‘round: two doubles at their front and back, and two singles: one at their left—

“This is that unexpected door,” Joyce informed. She patted its frame.

“Who could’ve guessed?”

“Me. I did.”

“You’re a genius.”

—and one at their right that led out into the backyard, as evident by the two windows framing its sides. The smell was gone, according to Joyce. It was something closer now, for both of them, like the static you get “when you turn the pages of a new book.”

“Does that have a smell?” asked Jerry.

“Yeah,” she said simply.

“Okay.”

She sighed, moved towards the far doors. “I feel like we picked the worst side of the house to begin with. There better be some cool stuff through here or I _am_ spray-painting an angry-looking penis on this rug.”

“Uh oh.”

“I’m a regular Banksy.

“Yep.”

She spun. “You’re bored.”

“What?—Oh.”

He paused, smiled sheepishly. A wind rustled against the trees outside, swept down, and curled a kiss under the crack of the porch door. “No,” he said. “I dunno. I’m in a mood, I guess. Maybe, it was whatever it was in that kitchen. Some—mind-numbing mold, or something.”

“Are you _actually_ bored?”

“I’m not bored!” he laughed. “Really! Let’s just—continue! Okay?” He slid toward the doors. “ _Ooh_ ,” he glowed, “I wonder what’s in _here_! Look, I’m having fun!”

“Wow. The emotion is so real.”

“I’m the world’s most genuine man.”

“Barely a man.”

“Aw no.”

The doors were opened, and from the cone of their flashlights Joyce’s eyes glistened. “Oh Jesus it’s a pool table.”

There it was, in the centre of the billiards room. It was green felt and maroon cabinet, with a stray cue laid upon its surface. Without a glance at its surroundings, Joyce felt around in the pockets.

“Found a ball.” She pulled it out, rolled it across the surface of the table and tracked it with her flashlight. Her eyes narrowed. “It’s just red.”

“There’s no number?”

“No. I guess it’s like a weird old version of pool.”

“Yeah, maybe.”

She sagged. “That sucks. I’ve never played actual pool before.”

Jerry was at the other end, rolling the ball between his two hands. “Really? Never?”

“Never. We never had a pool table.”

“Right. Well, I’ve never had one either, you know. I just play with my dad at the clubs, sometimes.”

“Hmm.”

“You never, uh…?” He paused, shifted his jaw. “Well, anyway. Give the stick a go.” He passed it to her, walked ‘round the edge of the table, and placed the ball at the end of the D.

“I gotta like, leverage it, right?”

“Yeah. Hang on, let me show you.” She gave him the cue, and he leaned, splayed his left hand in the shape of a sideways thumbs-up. “I do it off my thumb, usually.” Gripping it a few centimetres off the end, he bent his arm, slid the cue back and forth a few seconds, and then shot.

The ball bounced and rolled a little off to the side.

He winced. “Yeah so I’m actually really bad.”

“This is evident.”

“Well, you practice,” said Jerry, passing back the cue. “I’ll search for the other balls, I guess.” He hovered over toward the edges of the room while Joyce fumbled with the cue.

The billiards room was slightly smaller than the laundry, but despite its lack of size and the haphazard light of their torches, it felt cosy. The floor was predictably orned with a cordovan rug that seemed more preserved than those previous, and the ceiling was, perhaps unpredictably, without chandelier nor cobweb. There was more apart from the centre of the room, of course. Bookshelves lined the angled walls as if this were a library; a framed dry plate of a family leaned on the shelf of one near to the south exit; and at the farthest, westest wall, past the table’s end, two velvet chairs surrounded a bare wall as if huddling up to a fire.

Jerry’s flashlight swept over them, casting two bent, stout shadows. “There’s, uh, no sign of the other balls.” His shoes creaked on the boards close to the bare wall as he moved to search the cabinet at the leftmost exit. Inside were only cues, one of them missing. “I’ll search this other room? What’s in here…” He opened one of the doors and stuck his flashlight inside as Joyce stuck her head up. “Looks like a living room or something.”

Joyce made a poor shot, only barely clipping the ball. “Why would they keep their pool balls in a different room than the table?”

“I dunno! Victorian custom?”

“You rag too much on the Victorians, dude.”

“You’re too defensive about the Victorians, _dude_.”

“ _Bro_.”

“Should we search in here?” he asked.

“You can do it,” she said.

Jerry hesitated, titled his head. He looked back at her. “You’re not coming?”

“Do I need to? You scared of being alone?”

“Alone?” he asked, incredulous. “ _Alone_?” He projected the flashlight up below his tilted chin, swathing the peripheries above his lips in thick shadow. “So naïve,” he chuckled. “We’re not _alone_ , Joyce.”

She rolled her eyes.

“Don’t you see? The polished floorboards—the dusted china—the oiled doors… Someone is here, Joyce. And they are _cleaning things_ …”

“ _Wow_.”

“Scary, right? So I shouldn’t be alone—right? We need to stick together.”

“Nope.”

“Okay but what if—”

“Just go! Oh my god!”

“Okay! Okay,” he grinned, and slipped into the parlour.

Joyce watched as the door hinged slowly behind him—only the sound of soft displaced air—and then closed with that lever-clunk. She waited a few seconds, some purpose in her eyes—and then, gently, she laid down the cue, picked up the torch she positioned at the end of the table for light as she practiced, and pulled out her phone.

She squinted into the light. Brought her face closer, and pinched the screen. She was looking at floor plans for a Victorian mansion. Blueprints, though they weren’t especially blue anymore. With a dark expression that sought confirmation, she rushed over to the bare wall and put weight on the boards—listened for the creak against the otherwise heavy silence—and then turned to the bookshelves.

Her finger traced the titles. _Great Expectations_ by Charles Dickens— _Middlemarch_ by George Eliot— _The Belton Estate_ by Anthony Trollope— _Northanger Abbey_ … It stopped abruptly at one unnamed: a green, blankly buckram spine with a ribbon hanging like a tongue from one of its initial pages. With a finger and a thumb she pulled on it, and the wall—the bare wall—clicked, and began to turn.

She grinned. A passageway. It was a secret passageway.

‘ _You will find him there_ ,’ we had told her, ‘ _but you must have faith_.’

She kicked away one of the chairs that would have otherwise been crushed by the revolution, stepped back again, and waited until the wall—now at her back and opening into a room of cobblestone and shadow—glided about its hidden axis a smooth 180 degrees.

She was gone.

…

Silence, for a while. And the parlour doors opened—and in flooded light.

“I, uh…”

Jerry, his face half-hidden by darkness, made his return. Jerry, holding billiard balls—two, blue; six, green; seven, red—tumbling from his hand and onto the rug and under the table, his flashlight falling from corner to angled wall to bookshelf to table to fireplace, lit and crackling, in front of a chair upright and one on its side.

He sat down gently, his movements considered. His face for a time was one of feigned amusement, and his flashlight was trained upon the fireplace as if he could look hard enough and see that empty wall again.

But it fell, in time, and with it came his mask.

“Oh God,” he muttered finally.

The green sun plunged below the horizon.


	4. II

## II

Grime-water riles up against the hull of the steamboat liner, spits specks against its railings, and crashes down again. There is dirt, plant, and garbage among the froth,—it gurgles and runs the streets of the neighbouring town, rinses down the bank, sifts through the gaps between the boards of the dock and is now free, at last, to travel the seas of discovery and germinate whatever land that settles along its path.

There is a small family standing atop the bank with luggage and bags in tow. They watch as a sailor points out to the waves, explaining to a couple the workings of such a liner, such a fine liner as this, and the waters upon which it sails. He talks of a verdant country, a country of greenery like one has never seen, and prospects of riches and gold.

‘Father?’ says the family’s boy, a fine boy with cheeks the colour of plucked rose.

Joseph, his hands gripped at the handle of his suitcase, watches the shape of the town quiver in the smoke and dark, desert-like heat. After a moment, he gives a short harrumph to signal the boy to continue speaking.

‘Are we going on? I want to see the boat, and our cabin.’

Joseph slides his gaze down at his son, and with a heave of his chest, takes a deep breath,—in, out. He says, ‘Soon, Roy,’ and not a word more. He looks back out at the shadows.

Helen rubs her arm along the small of Joseph’s back and rests her head on his shoulder. She clutches tight. They appear to be saying goodbye, not to the quivering shape that lies before them, but to the country, its fields, and its people. Their daughter, Minnie, looks up from her seat on the bank, senses their melancholy, and breaks a yellowed reed in commiseration.

 

—

 

‘All aboard!’

Steam wallows. Hot, billowing steam tinged with green,—it forms clouds in the sky above the crowded dock.

‘Father?’

‘Yes, Roy?’ answers Joseph with a slightly perkier manner than before.

‘Minnie hasn’t joined us.’

Joseph sighs, looks about himself over the forms, then sifts through the crowd.

‘Watch yourself, man!’

‘My apologies, sir.’

He finds her at the cusp of the crowd, sitting on the edge of the dock with her hands beneath her knees. He stands there, his heart skipping a beat at seeing his daughter so contemplative, then kneels beside her.

‘Come up Minnie, let’s go.’

‘I saw a mermaid, father.’

‘Truly? That’s wonderful, sweetheart,—really, it is. But we must be going.’

Her big, whiskered eyes glide toward him. ‘Don’t you believe me?’

Joseph stares back at her with a parted mouth, goes to say something flattering with a gesture, then thinks better of it. ‘I don’t, to tell you the truth. I think perhaps your grandmother has been reading you too many fairy tales.’

‘No, really!’ she asserts. ‘She was large, and beautiful. I think she was swimming out there to get away from the smelly town.’

Joseph looks out at sea, then into the wide, smiling eyes of his daughter,—and bursts into laughter. It is a mellow laugh; beige, and creamy. ‘You might just be right, Minnie. I need to trust in you more often.’ He stands and gestures to the thinning crowd. ‘Come aboard, though, now. You can share with me the details of the mermaid’s attire as we take in our cabin.’

She clasps his palm, he takes hers, and they find their family again.

An anchoring rope is uncoiled from its post. A horn blows, its sound lapping like a stone across the waves of the green-tinged sea. A merman the size of a raincloud wallows out of the steam, raises a scaled hand to the ship’s hull, and with a soft, discrete heave, pushes it along its way.


	5. 3

## 3

 _Step_ — _step_ , _step_.

The rustling of jeans.

 _Step_. _Lean_.

Two eyes peering, and her voice in the candle-light.

“Hello?”

The passageway closed in. It was dark mossy flags, weathered back by the storm of time, and beyond it, footsteps—echoed footsteps, as if sounded across a great expanse. When one wanders through here, they have a purpose life-long: one floating on that expanse; one turned by its tide. They can smell the sea-salt.

A throat, cleared.

“ _Hello_?”

Her palms gripped the edge of the wood. There was no table here, no cabinet, no sideboard; no contemporary amenity kneeling before the mirror in its brass frame. Just a wooden block, flaky and shaven, like the hair off a rat’s back. Thick candle stalks leaked wax onto its surface into a puddle long since hardened.

She muttered a “Jesus” self-consciously, and sighed. “Hello? Are you there?”

Another voice. It was distant—almost childlike. “Hello,” it said.

The mirror, in function, was something pulled directly from a funhouse. The equivalent room was a dark compression, and the surface—acting as a kind of reverse blind-spot—was grimed-up and scuffed-down only from certain twists of the head. In it, Joyce herself was faint; what supplaced her was a figure, only barely visible in the reflection, spinning with its arms held away from its sides and moving in a perpetual pirouette.

Instead of polka-dot wallpaper it was a gradient of candle-light and shadow, and instead of carnival music playing from a speaker above our head—there was a humming.

“Hello,” the voice said again. It appeared to be sounding from that figure, but she couldn’t be certain. “ _Jesus_ ,” it said. “Are you there?”

“Yeah,” said Joyce—but it came out as a broken whisper. “ _Yeah_ ,” she said louder. “Hi.” Her right thumb was drawing jagged circles in the wood.

“Hi,” it said. “Who are you?” it said. “What do you go by?”

She hesitated, for a moment, her mind pumping and thrashing like a heart. The voice _was_ like a child—certainly—but it no longer seemed so distant. It seemed—no, yeah—it was coming from the inside of that mirror, that alternate reflection of a body, spinning, in darkness—but she couldn’t make out a mouth. Its head looked as if it was wrapped in dark bandage.

She cleared her throat again, not that there was anything to clear. “Joyce.”

“Joyce,” it echoed. There was a humming—nearly a whirring, like a steam engine—as the figure spun fast, fast, faster—hum hum hum—then slowed abruptly to its previous speed. Another shape weaved out of the bandages of that spinning body, awakened to the ding of an electric bell as a butterfly unfolds its wings. It was fuzzy, glowing dully, and jittering like a sawtooth in an old oscilloscope. It was a young girl in a fluttering dress, hollow eyes trailing as she floated up close to the glass.

“Joyce,” she said—an echo of an echo. “That’s funny. Joyce was my grandmother’s name.”

Joyce was standing upright now, the fingers of her right hand up at her mouth and drawing jagged circles into her thumb. Her eyebrows were incredulous, and her mouth nearly curled into a wary smile.

“Hello!” the girl called, pushing closer. Her nose almost grazed the surface.

“Hm!” Joyce sounded first, and then, “Hello!” Her voice echoed, echoed, against the stone, then spiralled back, back, into the mirror. “Hello, hello,” she repeated, quieter.

The girl leaned away, smiling. She was sitting now, her dull arms flickering on an invisible surface parallel with the shaven block. “Sorry. I can’t quite see you through the glass, you know. There’s some fog, or a tinting of some kind, I think. I am all clear from your end?”

“F-fairly clear,” said Joyce. She pursed her lips, aware of how flustered she sounded. She stepped back to the block again and hovered her hands awkwardly at the side.

“That’s good.” Her eyes weren’t hollow anymore; in fact, her entire body seemed to be coming into focus. There wasn’t any colour, still, but her shape was fuller, and the voice no longer seemed to project from the mirror surface but from the small mouth moving inside. It sounded older, somehow.

The girl grinned, her pearly-whites like LED strips. “Where are you from, Joyce?” she asked.

“Um—Brimmingstoke,” she said. “Australia, if—”

“Ah! Well!” she cried, and clapped her hands. “We make a pair, then, you and I.”

“You’re… from Brimmingstoke?”

“By this rate, surely—yes,” she decided. “I have lived here, perhaps, seven-eighths of my years up ‘til now?” The girl made a counting motion with all ten of her fingers, and nodded. “Of course, I was born in England, and my parents were English, and I was raised, for the most part, on English soil; but is it not in alliance with reason to attach myself with this town, if it is this town in which I have lived for the most of my days?”

Joyce leaned her hands more comfortably against the wood. “Yeah—yeah—I suppose so.”

“Yeah,” she drew out, smiling and leaning further forward. “You suppose so. For how long have you lived in Brimmingstoke?”

“Nearly 18 years.” She studied the girl’s face. It seemed to grow older the more she focused on it.

“Eighteen! And nearly! Is it nearly your birthday, Joyce?”

“Yeah, tomorrow.”

She drew the word out again, apologised with tongue in cheek, then said, “Well, Happy Birthday to you, Joyce! Any celebrations planned?”

She thought she found lines on the girl’s forehead before the question disrupted her focus. “Yeah, actually,” she said detachedly. “Just with a friend.”

“Ah! How vague.” The girl seemed to wait a few seconds for Joyce to respond, but after receiving no reply she spoke again. “But it appears I have overstepped my boundaries.”

Joyce shook her head, a smile creeping onto her face and her arms crossing. “No, no. It’s not that. It’s just—” she was still shaking her head, and she laughed nervously “—what’s happening, right now. It’s, um—surreal.”

The girl’s smile faded, replaced with something more grim in the corners of her eyes. She leaned back, and her hands retreated to the side of the invisible surface. “Ah. Yes, I suppose we had to come to that.”

“What are you?” asked Joyce, leaning closer. Her hands scraped across the block further into the candlelight. “I feel stupid asking this, but…”

“Yes, I suppose it’s enough about you. Always about me,” she was mumbling. She sighed, and with the breath, a cloud-shaped corner of the space about her came to dull, flickering life. “One moment,” she said, and then, “Father!” she yelled, her head tilted up in a languid diagonal. “Hello, _Patriarch_!”

“Yes, dear?” came a voice. A distant, echoed one, at first, but very quickly a near one. “—Oh! we have a visitor, do we?”

Another figure of dull white and flutter descended from the top of the frame. It was a scrawny, middle-aged man in a gown, his trim black hair scruffy underneath his nightcap. He held a book that he alternately glanced at too little and was distracted from too frequently to take in; but as he faced Joyce and peered closer into the glass, she noticed, after a moment, that he had blanks where his eyes might have been. She would have jumped if the figure wasn’t near-indistinguishable in the fuzz. Instead, she smiled—no—she _grinned_ , for a multitude of reasons that overpowered the possible discomfort of the situation. She had the compulsive urge to scream in faux-agony, but thought it might be inappropriate.

“It’s been some time,” the man mused, then returned, as if chain-driven, to face the girl. “May I—”

“No,” she said, flatly. She held her chin lightly on the top of her interlocked fingers, and her eyes were rolled perpetually to the 9’o’clock. “You may not speak your name yet, Father.”

“Oh,” he pouted, and drooped his head to read a few words of his book. Then, with a turn of a page and a pull of his chest, he demanded a “Well!” and a “why not?”

“We are not on terms of speaking names, Father,” she said, seemingly through a continuous stream of sighs and condescending moans. “I have not yet spoken mine, and for you to do so before I have had the liberty would reflect poorly upon myself.”

“Oh!” he cried, as if he didn’t quite trust the logic. “Well!” He seemed torn on whether he should turn his face to a letter or two of his book, but decided instead on stammering mutinously at his daughter. “Then for why do you not speak your name,” he demanded convolutedly, “if that is such the issue!”

“Father?”

“Yes, dear?” he asked her.

“Be quiet please.”

“Yes, dear,” he submitted.

He spun, slowly, to face Joyce again, a blank, yielding expression on his face as he flicked idly the pages of his book. She thought there might have been drool on the corner of his lip.

“Father?” asked the girl.

“Yes, dear?” his mouth spoke.

“What are we?”

“Why, what we have always been, my dear,” he drawled. “Father and daughter, lovingly united—”

“What are we _today_ , Father?” she said. “To this girl? To Joyce?”

“Ah! now that, is a more difficult question.”

He didn’t lean in close to stare at Joyce with his eyeless eyes, but, regardless, she felt his stare. It seemed to swim out through the fuzz, through the surface of the mirror, wade through her—then bounce against the wall behind her and leap in reverse, back into that other world. Through this process, he seemed to penetrate her heart, and to know her; but she was too delirious from the whole situation to sense any danger.

“ _Ghosts_ ,” the father intonated, finally. “We are _ghosts_ , today, dear one.”

“ _Ghosts_ ,” the girl repeated, drearily.

“Ghosts?” rushed the near-adult. “Sorry—if I’m interrupting, or anything.”

The girl nestled the cleft of her chin under her fingers and stared down at her. Her smile reached her eyes again, but forcibly—she was almost squinting. “You see us as ghosts, Joyce?”

“Well,” she said, laughing, “aren’t you?”

“If you so suppose.” She sighed, again, and there was the cloud, again, and the room behind her came into better focus. It looked strangely fragmented—tessellated almost—but she could tell it was a child’s bedroom. There was a single made bed in view with dolls jittering on top, and as Joyce twisted her head and the grime and the scuff reflected in and out like a tilt card, she made out behind the girl a closed door. “But I suppose we had better get on with it.”

She told her father to leave, and he did so with a flutter of pages and gown. It was just the two of them now: the girl, sitting on nothing, with her ghostly, British-fed skin, and her eyelash-whiskers like mermaid’s tails; and Joyce, standing there, all awkwardness and confusion gone and replaced with an easy sense of joy and amusement. _This is real_ , she thought. _This is actually happening_.

“So,” announced the girl. She breathed in, straightened herself, and held her head high.  “Joyce. For what purpose do you come here?”

Joyce went through the motions as well, but her head stayed level, and her smirk stayed wide. “Well,” she began, “I had the dream.”

“Yes.”

“Of the pirate, on the boat.”

“Yes, correct.”

“And he told me that if I came here, to the Bluff, I could get anything I wanted.”

“Okay.”

“See _anybody_ I wanted to see.” Her nails were tapping victoriously on the wood.

“Yes, alright.”

“And at first I was like—okay, yeah, a dream is a dream, there’s not even an old mansion in Brimmingstoke, there was never anything as cool as that. But then I looked it up, and it was real!”

She pursed her lips, waited for the girl to affirm, or something, but she didn’t, so she kept talking.

“I’d never heard of it. But then, I started asking around, and _no-one else had either_. And, so—”

“Yes. Yes,” she interrupted with a hand. “Okay. Alright. That’s quite enough. Note I did not ask you _why_ , you came here, Joyce. I do not need to be told.”

“Ah.”

“I asked what you came here _for_ ,” she prompted. Her tone was like that of an annoyed school secretary. “Go on,” she said.

Joyce went on. “Are you Minnie?” she asked. “Minnie Morris?”

“Ahh,” she gasped, and slipped her small head into her hands. “For the Lord’s—”

“You are, yeah?” She practically jumped. “I kind of thought so. I was reading old newspapers in the city library, and I was reading about you, and your whole family, and—wow!”

“And what,” she asked through the palms of her hands, “did you learn about me, Joyce?”

“Well!—” she paused. Her eyebrows raised. “Not much, actually.”

“Exactly,” she said. “I was not the subject of the story back then, and nor am I now.” Minnie pulled her head out of her hands, stared into her, then spoke again with force. “Because I am unimportant. Because everything of which you are speaking is unimportant.” She leaned close. “You are wasting time, Joyce. Yours, and mine.”

There was a flustered little screeching noise as she leaned back, as if the invisible chair beneath her had scraped against the floor. It made Joyce flinch. Her hands retreated from the block, and one swept up to her forearm. She gripped it, then scratched at it, and as she stared into Minnie’s bright, glaring eyes, and felt the cold of the cobblestone whisper a quick breath onto her bare neck, her heartbeat climaxed, and began to slow.

Minnie smiled, and with her eyes. “But there is a caveat,” she said. “ _You_ are important, Joyce Pearson. And that is why I want to see the focus on _you_. Do you know how many come through here, desiring who I am; what I am; how I am? Do you understand how tired that can make one, after so many years?” That smile turned into a grin, and yes—there were lines there, on the forehead, that came up in creases as the muscles moved underneath her skin. “Very. Very much, is the answer.”

Joyce, with a calm smile, tucked her hands into her pockets. She felt like she knew this girl, now, better than any newspaper scoop ever could. But, “how do you know my last name?”

“We learn quickly,” she said. “I know your name. I know of your family, and of your home. And, importantly, I know of the reason for which you travel here.”

“Yeah?” She pulled at the insides of her pockets.

“Your friend,” she said. “Jerry. You came here with him, didn’t you, because you were uncertain?”

Joyce hummed something close to an agreement. The expanse was closing in, and she lost her grip.

“Which one?” she stated. “It’s one, or the other. Because you can’t have both.”

The child’s room behind her scrunched into itself and quivered out of existence. There was the body now, a blur piercing through her, cordovan bandages twisting and rustling like clay about the head, and the neck, and the arms. There was a humming.

“But you don’t need to tell me,” she said. “I already know.”

And she disappeared.

A chattering of teeth and of talk—wringing out in the darkness. The body spun, and spun, and hummed, and hummed, and Joyce stepped back. She turned about her, searched warily out into the expanse. But there was only the harsh rustle of her coat and the humming, stuck vibrating back and forth along a single point in the air around her ear—now her neck—now her wrists. She couldn’t see the way she came in; she couldn’t see anything. The candlelight was tempting. She stepped back again, eyes wide against the shadows, waiting for someone to come out with bottle in hand, to unscrew the cork and pour over her dark memory and shadowed intention. She waited to drown. But as she stepped back and her sleeve almost grazed against the fire, the humming stopped, and a hand placed its palm against the glass.

 _Dink_.

She jumped back and twisted ‘round and gave in to a sharp intake of breath, stepped away— _step_ , _step_.—finger gouging hollow hole into thumb. Her hand was arched up at her mouth, legs bent awkwardly, a bit of angled hair in her eyes. She was staring through the strands—her vision swaying—at the palm, facing her, pressed against the mirror. It was full colour, unlike the ghosts. It was textured, unlike the tessellated room. It was real. She traced the fingers with her eyes, felt visually the lines, the scuff, the wear. There was a whirring. She heard him—Joyce, Joyce. His voice—his voice. Can you hear me? Do you miss me?

And she stepped forward, tears threatening to roll in her eyes, and she pressed her own hand against the palm. A kind of cry scraped her throat as she touched it—as she raised her hand up, and felt the skin against her own. The lines, and the scuff, and the wear—what she had felt visually was now physical—and she could feel the pores now, and the thin sweat of labour, and the same joints that turned those pages, that stroked her hair as she fell asleep. She heard him—Joyce, Joyce. His voice. Joyce— _Joyce_. _Joycey, can you hear me? Hey, Joycey—are you there? Jesus—Joyce, it’s been a while, y’know? The least you could say is that you missed me, Joycey._

“I miss you,” she cracked.

 _Clasp my hand_.

“I can’t.”

 _I’m here. I’m here with you, Joycey. You don’t feel it? Clasp my hand_.

“Dad…” The space between her hand and his slipped between them like an air current, and yet—it wasn’t a barrier. She knew that, as she pressed her hand against his, as his sweat merged up with hers and somehow the webs between her fingers felt warmer. She knew that, as she spread them as he spread his own, and her fingers passed through the glass, as his did—and her fingers felt the tops of his knuckles, and his felt the bottom of hers.

He was there with her.

 _Hum_.

 _My sweet little egg monster_.

“Haha, stop.” Tears.

 _Hum_.

The flame of the candle heating her cheek.

Outside, Jerry perched on the velvet armchair and pressed his elbows against his kneecaps, the flames of the fireplace streaking shadows of him high and brooding down the length of the room. His brain beat against his skull, and cold chatters danced about him in the darkness, vying to take him in, to hold him close, to desert him.

“You’re so stupid.”

 _But you remember_.

Was it a photograph? He stared absently, grinding his tongue with his teeth, at the framed dry plate leaning on the bookshelf near the parlour doors, its image bleary, greyscale, and reflective of the hot red fire. It was a family stood in front of a grandfather clock—one husband, one wife, one child with blushed cheeks, one little girl named Minnie Rose Morris with bleached ones, neck held in a brace and eyes falling glassily from the corners of her lids. You can’t exactly puppeteer an eyeball, now—can you?

To her side, a shadowy figure streamed ghostily, its figure a fuzzy, wavering line undulating out of the frame.

 _My happy little barking ghost_.

And in the reception hall, a figure stood in the once-pooling light of the green sun, arms held away from its hip bone as if much too unearthly for their mortal frame.

Its eyes were white and white and black-spotted billiard balls. Its eyes,

_Spin, spin._

they spun in their sockets.


	6. 4

## 4

“You freaked me out.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“You really fucking freaked me out.”

The wall was turning again and Jerry lunged back in his chair, jumped off in a stumble, his nerve-strings plucked pizzicato. He fell backwards against the side pocket—(skin smacked against wood)—gripped the billiards table for balance, fingers digging into the felt and legs springing up like pistons for support. He had succumbed to the roar of the fireplace with the seamless seam, forgotten that it wasn’t there mere minutes ago, sat there with his face slowly burning in the heat.

She appeared, ghost-like, in the cone of his flashlight. Her face was sullen, her hair blown back as if pulled by some coursing wind. Jerry stumbled forward and pulled her into a tight embrace as if to replicate the gradual fastening in his chest over the last 11 minutes.

A sigh. Ragged. With a note of finality. “Christ.”

They sat on the steps now, on the porch out back, where the night sliced through them and threatened to freeze. It was a soft breeze that rustled the encompassing eucalypt shadows, sounding something quite unlike a hush and much more like a heavy breathing. Tufts of dead grass peeped through the porch-boards.

“I thought you’d been swallowed by the house,” he said.

“What?” Joyce angled her head across to him, chin in her palms.

“It’s stupid.”

A sliver of blue—long, almost curved—watched over the trees. The leaves, which caught more shakily the wind now, shone mutedly at their cusps as if gilded by the light and brightly between their gaps as if heated at the core.

“I was gone for like five minutes you know.” Her jaw bounced lazily against her palm, up and down, like a reverse nutcracker.

“I know.”

“You haven’t asked me where I went yet.”

“No.” He was looking down at his crossed legs, rubbing his thumbnail. “Don’t want to know.”

“Why?” she laughed. “I can show you.”

“Don’t want you to show me.”

She eyed him for a few moments, deciding whether she should say something or leave him be. He got like this sometimes, in high school. All silent, kind of ominous, brooding something edgy. She left it—turned back to her chin-on-palms, closed her eyes against the cold and thought about ghosts.

A minute of chilly night wind under the starless night sky, and leaves shuffling above their heads like playing cards.

Jerry raised his eyes and stared out into the yard, his lips stern and his lashes low. There was a dusk tree in its centre, its ashy branches creaking over a wooden bench at the trunk. It was barely visible in the nightlight—lit only by the streaks of ultraviolet radiating through the trees—and there were no more willow-trails to be swept by the wind. He thought about why he said that; why he didn’t want to know.

“Jerry?”

He assumed, uncertainly, inconclusively, that his nerves were just strung up enough that he didn’t care. Now he was thinking straight he figured there must have been some kind of mechanism for the hidden passageway—maybe a secret in the brickwork or a book-lever?—but now he was thinking like a kid in some choose-your-own-adventure, and a _hidden passageway_? He felt stupid for even thinking about. He heard a live studio audience in his head, laughing at him perform these comical feats of logic as the screen above his head flashed ‘APPLAUSE’, ‘APPLAUSE’. So the straighter his thoughts became, the more apathetic he acted towards them.

He didn’t care that Joyce had betrayed his trust, that she hadn’t even apologised for it.

‘Hey, I brang the marshmallows.’

‘Oh, nice.’

He didn’t care that she’d been acting weird the whole night. Too jokingly— _anxious_.

‘We should light a fire or something. Roast ‘em.’

She pulled apart the bag with a crunkling and held it out. ‘We khould—’ she started with a mouthful of mallow. Swallowed. ‘—set your school books on fire. I got my lighter.

He popped a marshmallow. ‘Okay, yeah, on second thought, no.’

He didn’t care that this wasn’t a ‘we’ thing anymore, that this was probably never meant to be a ‘we’ thing.

Jerry lay back on the chill concrete, his palms under his head, then at his stomach—and sighed. It wasn’t comfortable, and it was cold, but he didn’t really care.

It was 1:19AM. The stars were out, twinkling in their various hues—yellow, violet, orange, silver—and so too was the quarter-moon, bright blue in tinge, enormous at the cusp of the sky. There was nothing else in the eyes of the two near-adults as they lay on that rooftop; not school building, not household, not flat plane. Him, and her, at the top of the—

“Hey, it’s cold.”

Jerry blinked his tears away—tears sprung from the breeze—and his head focused again. “Mmm.” The live studio audience cooed their sympathy.

Joyce entered the antechamber, Jerry walking in close behind. It was dark in here now, but not dark enough that they couldn’t see without flashlights. Joyce stepped onto the corner of the teal rug and turned ‘round to see Jerry closing the door with that squeakless squeak of the latch.

They stared at each other.

“So… what?” she said.

Jerry looked on. “What?” He slipped his hands in his pockets.

“What are we going to do now?”

A silence between them. It was only the muffled breeze humming at the windows as Jerry dropped his gaze down against the lines of the floorboards, slipped across the rug to the small mirror aside the kitchen doors and looked back against the shadowed lines of his face. The wood wouldn’t care creak.

Joyce would. “I want to go up to the second floor.”

“No.” He dug his palms into the corners of the mirror-stand.

“No? What do you mean no?” A caustic pause, and she took a step forward. “Jerry, talk to me, come on.”

“We’re not going.” He stared down at the hard wood-grain, his grip tightening, and corrected himself: “ _I’m_ not going, at least. This is wrong. Whatever happened in that—that secret goddamn—” he ran his tongue over his teeth for guidance and shook his head “—hidden passageway or _whatever_ it was. It’s wrong.”

“You don’t even know what happened!”

“I know.”

“I didn’t even tell you!”

“I know,” he said, his voice straining. “I don’t want you to tell me.”

“Ugghhh.” Joyce planted her forehead in her palms and spun away. “ _Why_? _Why_ do you have to be so melodramatic? It’s hard enough to—Jesus, I’m telling you anyway.”

She told him anyway. She saw her dad. She saw ghosts, in a mirror. And it was real. As she talked, and her resolve slowly died away as she put her thoughts into words, that glaring blue light began to pierce the windows either side of the porch-door. It pierced the room in thirds, pierced through Jerry’s neck—he stepped away, still listening intently though trying not to show it—and in that other place, the entrance hall, a pair of billiard balls began slowing to a crawl.

“—I know I said I don’t believe in ghosts anymore, but—”

“But you think your dad is haunting this house.”

“I—” she stopped, bit her lip, hooked her thumbs in her pockets. “I don’t know.”

He sighed, cemented his head in his hands and then tore them away. Looked ‘round at her. “Why did you even take me here?” he asked.

“What do you mean?”

“If your goal was to talk to some facsimile of your dead fucking dad—” he bit his lip, but shook his head and continued “—then why bring me along? Why? Why couldn’t you just spare me the heartache—okay?” He sniffed. “You’re a fucking idiot,” he cracked.

Footfalls in the entrance hall.

Jerry spun ‘round, blinking eyes obediently tracking the wooden boards below, and set to making his way over to the entrance hall door.

Joyce spoke again. Her voice was almost timid, almost tense. “Where are you going?”

“Home.”

“Jerry, you’re being—”

“You can get home fine. Like you said: you’ve walked the highway before.”

He took a step forward—

heard mock-cheering inside his head

—felt the phone casing in his pocket, and turned again. “And don’t worry about the bag—”

the door opened soundlessly behind him into darkness

“—I don’t really ca—”

A pair of shadowed knuckles drew over his open mouth, twisted, and pushed him over the side table.

 _Crash!_ —a mirror fell to the floor, shattered—the rolling of wooden drawers—and the table cracked against his hip. Joyce’s eyes widened, the lids stretching open as if pulled, and she backed away, hands fumbling with the bag she swung over her left shoulder. Rope, bolt-cutters, she thought. _Pepper spray_.

Something climbed into the room. Some man, or a facsimile of one. Some figure of dark tourniquets, loops of liquorice tendon wound ‘round and ‘round and ‘round, its shoulder to Joyce’s left glistening dully in a streak of blue, and the rest, dim.

She felt the pepper spray wouldn’t have done her much good. Its eyes were globes. A white one and another, set hard, shining and staring true through the darkness with a small, black, luminescent dot at its centre. She felt that it was precisely centred, that dot. As a designer would ensure that all the facets of their creation were aligned perfectly with or against one another, she felt that the deep turns of that thing’s surface somehow came together, were built up to, that white and black-spotted billiard ball.

It was staring at her, she realised. She realised it could spin ‘round and ‘round and she would still see that black dot flowing; still see it, she realised, even as it turned ‘round and ‘round because her own black dot would spin around with it—

The figure turned to Joyce’s right, bent down, lifted the table with barely a bend of its back; its arms looped downwards into the gloom. She forced herself away and pulled the regular knife from the bag at her side.

Jerry lay against the boards, his head spinning from the way it smacked the corner of the table, spun, and then jutted into the wood. He groaned, but didn’t hear himself. He saw the room through blurs of fallen polygons cornered by a black shape like metallic putty creeping through the cracks of his vision, but couldn’t think of their significance. There was a thumping in the back of his throat.

“Hey. Hey!” shouted Joyce. She was stood on the frills of the rug, lopsided from the drooping bag still hanging from her shoulder, holding the knife out to the intruder as if it were a misguided peace offering.

The figure’s neck snatched towards her. The body stiffened, posed as an Egyptian bas relief. Its face: shining blue in the relative pitch. Its face: two billiard balls for eyes and two human nostrils for a nose, and two human lips, and a human forehead ruptured in two, and— _snatch!_ —two billiard balls for eyes that spun, spun, spun ‘round.

Beneath a translucent film the metallic putty squelched and twisted excitedly into the centre of the room. It amassed there, flickered briefly in the blue light into something flowing and white and thin. There was the hollow sound of a switch flickering on and off upstairs as the polygons—shaking fuzzily like a CRT would if a bluebird skewered itself on the aerial—collapsed through it and fell out of view behind the blue streams.

A knife and a backpack lying on their sides on the frills of the rug.

A black dot with flowing lashes wound into tourniquets, blinking into clarity out of that mass of putty and stretching Jerry’s eyelids open.

A sensation of two chill marbles touching the gel of his own and the searing taste of liquefied aluminium foil crunkling at the back of his tongue.

. . .

He felt pretty comfortable, all things considered.


	7. 5

## 5

‘Truth or struth?’ she asked.

Jerry’s eyelids twitched open. His brow furrowed, but only for a moment—then he saw the sequined night—the dark blanket spread out below him. Stars of a variety of hues. An all-sorts liquourice bag of stars all ripped open, its contents toppled across the velvet. There is the lemon; there is the chocolate; there is the cherry. None of those little blue jelly-buttons.

He chewed, swallowed—something plasticine and gooey goes hard down his throat. ‘Huh?’ he says.

‘Pick one.’

He twists his head to his left, then his right—sees her lying there, one knee propping up the sky and pink half-eaten marshmallow caught between her teeth.

‘What…’ Turns back. ‘What—is it like a game?’

‘Yeah. Truth or struth, dude.’ There’s a crunkling. ‘Liche chrooth or dere.’

‘Really? That’s like, a kid’s thing.’

‘Ohh, _wohw_.’ Swallowed. ‘Didn’t realise you were the authority on what does and does not constitute as a _kid’s_ thing.’ Popped another.

‘You’re racing through those.’

Swallowed. ‘What, do you want one?’

‘No, you have them. They taste kind of metallic, honestly.’

‘Really? Tasty to me.’ She swiped another, pulled a gooey chunk from its corner, and laid the chunk on her tongue. She furrowed her brow and reached thoughtfully up to the stars. ‘I’m getting hints of… hmm—’ she danced her tongue like she was stirring a drink ‘—cinnamon? Or is it ochre?’

‘It must be.’

‘Yes, it _must_ be ochre. A flavour like bark jam. And…’ She twisted her hand as if to sculpt the sky. ‘Perhaps a splash of oregano?’

‘A _splash_ of oregano, you say?’

‘And just a pinch of lower-middle-class tears.’

‘A stately flavour.’

‘Man, we’re not funny.’ She swallowed. ‘But anyway—truth or struth. Pick one.’

‘How do you play?’ he asked.

‘Are you kidding?’

‘No, I mean like—’

‘Just pick!’

‘Okay!’ he cried. Cleared his throat. ‘Truth, I guess.’

‘Truth, eh? In-ter-es-ting. Let me think for a moment.’

The marshmallow bag gets raided again—they’re just about out already—and Jerry listens to the wet smacking of Joyce’s teeth as she thinks. He smiles, but there’s some kind of dull pain at the back of his skull, so he fidgets to get a better spot on the concrete.

His mind casts out a line, tries to fish out where he might be, since when. Some GPS coordinates, maybe. Does a mind have GPS coordinates? He thinks about it for a second or two, almost arrives at the conclusion of ‘No, I really don’t think so,’ and then he realises he’s on the roof of the school building above the quad. Something in him expects the mind to start falling down on his head with the realisation. It’s 1:32AM, he knows. He’s been here on the roof since 1:19.

He can imagine, in his mind’s eye, the outer face of the building. Some blurred mish-mash of modern supports and windows on top of a few Federation arches and colonnades.

‘What!’ The word rings out, echoes dustily off the sequin stars. ‘Is. Your favourite constellation?’

He chuckles. ‘Really? That’s your hard-hitting question?’

‘I dunno! We can build up to it.’

‘Well, okay. Stars. I don’t know ‘em.’

‘Oh, please.’

‘What?’

‘You were literally telling me this morning that you were a banger of an astronomer—’

‘Banger.’

‘—when you were younger. Also shut up.’

‘I didn’t say I was an astronomer, I just said I liked astronomy. When I was like, 11.’

‘Well, still. You must remember something.’

Jerry makes a sound with his mouth akin to a spaceship entering hyperspeed, stuttering midway, and then flatlining. ‘Well, there’s Crux, I guess.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Southern Cross, basically.’

‘Ohhh. Aussie Star.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Boring. Can we even see that from here?’

Jerry pauses for a moment to try and feel, with his eyes, for creases in the velvet sky. A point here, a line there…

‘Uhh-dunno,’ he concludes.

‘Okay, what’s another?’

‘I guess there’s like the Zodiac signs. Leo, and Virgo, and whatever else.’

‘Ohh, that’s right. I forgot they were constellations for some reason.’

‘Really?’

‘Yeah. Zodiac is just a thing in my brain now. I think it’s more synonymous with pop culture now than actual astronomy, y’know? Like the Zodiac Killer.’

‘Mmm,’ he says. And then, delayed, ‘you mean Ted Cruz?’

‘Wow. You’re so funny.’

‘Yeah.’

‘You’re just so funny.’

‘Yeah, sorry.’

‘You’ve ruined stars. And murderers.’ She sighs. ‘A politician as a serial killer is pretty much the worst conspiracy theory.’

‘But it’s funny.’

She flings her hands up into the air. ‘Conspiracy theories aren’t meant to be funny!’ she cries. Her voice echoes out across the quad. ‘They’re meant to be weird and scary!’

‘Whoa.’

‘Also, we can’t make Ted Cruz jokes because we’re not American.’

‘What, is it offensive?’

‘No, it’s just sad.’ She sat up and shook out the bag. ‘Wanna go inside?’

‘Yeah,’ he says, standing, and wiping off his jeans. ‘It’s kind of cold.’

The sound of a gate on the grounds unfolding with a creak like a bird’s call. Jerry starts, and Joyce grins. But it was just the wind.

 

*

 

‘Truth or struth?’ he asks.

‘Wait ‘til I get down the damn ladder first.’

 _Clung_. _Clung_. _Clung_ —

She lands with both boots on the linoleum.

‘But yeah, truth.’

‘What should I ask?’

‘What? Come _on_ , dude.’

‘Okay, alright.’

‘I swear you’re not even a real teenager.’

They’re standing in a broom closet—and a plant room—and the entrance to the roof, consisting of a squeaky step ladder rising up against a hole in the ceiling. Maybe it was left over from construction work. Maybe someone just decided this would be the perfect spot for a rooftop entrance. It gave them access, anyway, and the room is never locked, anyway, so it doesn’t really matter the reason. There’s a hissing and a clawing from some shadow-monster scuttling about among the pipes in the rafters.

‘It’s a possum,’ says Joyce.

‘I know.’

‘Yeah.’ She scrapes the door open. ‘You just looked a bit scared.’

‘Yeah.’

A school corridor at night-time, dim starlight sparkling in the window. Like gemstones. There is the citrine; there is the tiger; there is the ruby. Spinning. Magic keys in the glaze, in the cracks of the glass, in the holes like stab wounds leaking cold air into the inside. The two snuggle up in their coats and echo out into the corridor, Joyce’s light gliding out toward its ends, but unreaching. Shadows, then. Shadows of the closet; shadows of the corridor; shadows of the quad, when Joyce looks down and out through the glass. Swampy shadows over the benches and the handball courts, where students play by day, melting under the heat of the green sun. By night—Joyce imagines, smirking, some dedicated kid who trains in the shadows, spinning low-shots against the brick wall and executing somersaults to punt them back. Like a ninja.

The kid sees her looking down from the cracked window. He bends, and he bows, with dignity and with grace. Joyce waves back with a static hand and a toothy smile.

‘Who,’ Jerry stamps, ‘do you _like_?’

‘ _Whoa_!’ she echoes. Turns. Jerry is perched there, claws sharpened and foot denting the floor. ‘What a _hard-hitting_ question, Jerry!’

‘Uh-huh.’ He slips his hands in his pockets.

‘Who do _I_ like?’ she asks, hands on hips.

‘Yep!’

‘Nobody!’ she says.

‘Oh!’

‘Truth or struth!’ she asks.

He smiles and begins to turn. ‘Umm!’

‘Who do _you_ like, Jerry?’

‘Hey!’ he complains, facing back. ‘I didn’t get to pick.’

‘You were gonna do truth.’

‘You don’t know that.’

‘Do you want to pick struth, then?’

He thinks for a moment, turns around to face the shadow. ‘I’m kind of scared to.’

‘Of course you are.’

He stands there and hums to himself against the dark. He looks up at the ceiling—sees pockmarked panels, stained cold with time. ‘I don’t like anybody either, Joyce,’ he answers with a sigh. ‘None of the guys in this school are really that interesting.’

‘True.’ She takes a few ponderous steps down the opposite end of the corridor—‘Or’—then spins ‘round, flashlight whirling, ‘maybe _we’re_ boring? We can’t even do truth or struth right.’

‘Yeah.’ He squints against the dark, grips onto the phone in his pocket. There’s a shining in the shadows, and a hissing.

‘I mean, does our collective schoolgirl imagination really end at ‘who do you like’? That’s so boring.’

Pulls it out and unlocks it.

‘But I mean, our conversations are more interesting when we aren’t limiting ourselves to Q&A,’ she reasons. ‘So maybe this game just sucks. Or maybe we’re too old for it. Or—’

‘Joyce I think there’s something in the shadows,’ he says quickly. He goes to turn on his phone’s flashlight with a shaky thumb.

Joyce steps beside him and flicks her torch forward. Light swings, wards, and reveals the interior of the broom closet. ‘It’s a fire extinguisher, dude.’

A blink, and a frown. ‘Oh.’

She grins, laughs. ‘Boo, Jerry,’ she says. ‘Boo.’

He turns.

 

*

  



	8. III

## III

A broad-shouldered near-adult with a bandage wound about the wrist listens as the horse-drawn carriage approaches from afar. His eyes are shut against the sunrays and the larval flies which beat against his head. His back is straight against the iron-lace gate, and his arms clasped around the caps of his hunched knees.

He breathes in, out, through his nose, and his chest rises and falls. He opens his eyes, squints.

He hates to be out here.

A fly scrapes its wings against his cheekbone and goes to investigate his ear. It wonders whether this would be a nice, dark place to escape the heat of the green sun, and buzzes with delight at the earwax soaking its tarsi.

Buzz, buzz.

_Buzzing._

_The incessant buzzing._

Arthur heaves himself upward and wrings out his ear with a grumble. The fly falls out battered, nearly dead, and with a sorrowful buzz it promises to bother him nevermore. He sneers, swiping at the other insects dancing around his pitched head, giving him the appearance as if he’s batting away rocks from a stony waterfall,—and then he straightens, produces a solemn expression, and wraps his hands behind the crux of his tailbone.

‘Now, is it not just wonderful?’

‘The craftmanship is _splendidly_ sophisticated.’

‘Give it time until you see the interior! Nearly entirely furnished from the previous owners, as I have mentioned.’

The horse-trots come to a stop, reeled in nearly ten feet from Arthur’s position in front of the estate. The Morris family drops out,—first Minnie and Roy with unbottled excitement, then Helen and Joseph with reserved curiosity,—and after them climbs the coachman, a rotund, entrepreneurial man with a handlebar moustache that appears almost pinned upon his face.

‘And here he is, the blackfellow I was talking to you about,’ the coachman says, striding up to Arthur and gripping him by the shoulder. He flinches. ‘He won’t talk very much, so don’t waste your breath striking up conversation.’

Joseph eyes Arthur for a moment, and Arthur stares back. He is impressed by his resoluteness, his _placidity_ , and is tempted to offer him a handshake,—but he thinks better of it. ‘He’s a fine looking fellow, certainly,’ Joseph says instead.

‘Indeed!’ replies the coachman. ‘He has served myself and this house for many years without much concern. I believe you will get much out of him.’ He turns, sweeps a fly or two off of his arm, and then unhooks the gate latch. With a heavy, rattling squeak he and Arthur push, and then, moving to their backs, pull, the separate wings of the gate, holding them apart to allow the family passage.

‘My apologies for the startling noise. Nothing a little oil can’t fix!’ He chuckles, then glares pointedly at Arthur. ‘Grab their belongings, would you?’ he orders, jabbing a thumb back through the gate. Arthur offers a slight nod and hurries to the carriage.

‘So what brings you to Australia, Joseph? Business? _Gold_?’

‘Helen made the decision, in the end. It was her assets we were leaving behind, after all.’

‘Ah! A woman with wanderlust, I see.’

The horse snorts at Arthur as he moves past and behind it to the luggage compartment at the back of the carriage. His footsteps are heavy on the gravel, reverberating off the shrubbery and gumtrees on either side of the road, and the sky overhead. A magpie calls somewhere in the bush. Its song is croaked and rough, yet high, melodic, and spotted with mimicked touches of galahs and cockatoos. Arthur unhooks the straps and latches to these notes, and with a heave, lifts the trunk and lets it down onto the ground. He would be relieved by such a small load if he did not reason that the family had more belongings waiting at the dock to be collected by a transport coach.

A noise draws his attention as he fastens the straps again. He stops, squints; it was the sound of gravel, like those of his earlier footsteps, but lighter, airier. He finishes fastening them, turns to carry the trunk,—and jumps. There is a girl there, the family’s girl, sitting on the leather container, smiling and bouncing her feet against its side.

‘Hello,’ she sings. ‘My name is Minnie. How do you do?’ She offers her hand, grinning now, her whiskered eyes pushed up by her rosy cheeks.

Arthur frowns, steps around the side of the carriage and peers back at the Bluff. The rest of the Morris family is none the wiser as they continue their approach. Helen and Joseph are engaged in superficial conversation with his adoptive father,—Arthur can hear his dry chuckles even from here,—and Roy is lagging behind, dragging his right hand along the tips of the untrimmed weeds bordering the path. He makes a sound with his tongue and teeth, remembering he was ordered to cut it to a respectable height before the new ménage arrived,—and then turns back to the girl. Her hand is still held out for a handshake, but she has propped it up with her other arm to avoid fatigue.

She coughs. ‘Please, shake my hand. It’s only polite.’

Arthur shakes his head. ‘Run along to your family, miss.’

Minnie’s eyes alight, and she pulls her hand away. ‘You can talk!’ she says, bouncing up and down on the trunk.

Arthur hushes her, blood pumping in his ears. ‘Miss, if you could please be quiet.’ Her voice almost echoed,—if the magpie’s song was less pertinent she would have surely been heard. It is a strange mimicry now, sounding aptly like the screeching of the estate gate, but lower, and more wooden.

Minnie climbs off, landing lightly on the gravel. She steps forward and holds out her hand again. ‘My name is Minnie. What’s yours?’

Arthur parts his mouth and rubs his tongue along the backs of his front teeth, breathing tiredly. ‘My name is Arthur. Now,—’

She frowns and cocks her head to the side. ‘Do you know what a handshake is, Arthur?’

‘Yes!’ he says, putting two fingers to his temple and screwing shut his eyes. ‘Yes, of course I know, but Miss,—’

‘Then please reciprocate, Arthur. Unless you _wish_ to act impolite?’

Arthur glares down at her smiling face for a moment, depleting the air in his lungs like a pair of bellows. Then, glancing again at the estate to ensure that they are out of eyesight of the family, he holds Minnie’s hand in his own and moves it up and down gently. ‘How do you do, Minnie?’

‘Very well, thank you,’ she replies, grinning widely. It is somehow not a sly, cynical grin, he notices. Her teeth are not those of wolves, nor are her lips the red of blood—they are sugared with innocence, naiveté, and the belief of joy in the simple process of interaction. ‘How do _you_ do, Arthur?’ she asks, and coughs into her shoulder.

‘Very well, thank you, Miss,’ he replies. ‘Did we greet?’

‘I believe so. It is nice to meet you, Arthur.’

He refuses to smile, but he feels his heart lifted at the bond established with this young girl. It is a peculiar bond, one that he hasn’t much experienced with any resident of this manor prior. He wonders whether this family will be more tolerable after all.

He doubts it.

Arthur takes his hand away and gestures to the Bluff. ‘Get back to your family now, Miss. They worry.’

Minnie hooks her fingers around her tailbone, turns to leave, and then stops. ‘Are you our servant, Arthur?’

‘I am, miss.’

‘Will you read to me stories at night?’

He blinks. ‘If your parents are accepting of that, then I can, if you wish.’

Minnie bares him her pearly whites. ‘Okay—I’ll wish it. Goodbye!’ She spins in place, her dress fluttering, and walks back up the path to her family, finally gone.

He watches her leave for two or so moments, then picks up the trunk with both hands and moves toward the estate himself. It is still damp from the journey—it feels cold against his reach-me-downs.

A fly, battered and nearly-dead, rests on his shoulder with a wily smirk unseen.


	9. 6

## 6

He drives.

‘—there’s this guy on a Cacophochat server I go on.’

‘What the hell is that?’

‘Um… do you remember the IM we used to use back in high school? Sk—’

‘Skalpel?’

‘Yeah. It’s like that, but, there’s no video chat, or text colours, and everyone on there is at each other's necks half the time. And people can create their own emojis.’

‘So it’s worse.’

‘Yeah, basically. Anyway, there’s this server I go on made for a game I play every now and then. There’s this guy on there, don’t actually know his name, but he’s the admin of the server.’

‘Oooh.’

‘I’ve seen pics of him on—’

‘ _Pics_?’

‘No, nothing like that, Christ. There’s a channel where people who’re brave enough post pictures of their dumb faces. He’s only posted a couple, but, I think he’s pretty cute.’

‘Yes! And now you’re e-dating, right? Making gay e-babies.’

‘Well, no.’

‘Oh.’

‘He’s cute, and he’s friendly, and he’s really really funny…’

‘Oh no.’

‘But.’

‘But?’

—

strawberrygirl4729_X278A

any single boy out there looking out for a good time.? ;)

  


ForgottenDignity

so basically the meta is just fucked at this point. amalo’s been a broken character from the offset. he never should have been put in the roster.

  


Eweweiki`

I mean,

I Guess

  


strawberrygirl4729_X278A

contact HOT lady czechoslovakian WOMEN KISSING CHALLENGE pqXy98_Zq@fffffgypt.za

  


Eweweiki`

But;

I like Playing Amalo.. I think it is Fun to Play

  


ForgottenDignity

yeah. everyone loves playing amalo. because he’s broken as shit.

  


Eweweiki`

No I Don`t think so

  


ForgottenDignity

he has a fucking millisecond long ult cooldown. you put him up against any other gladiator bar except like juicebox because that piece of gargbases probably more broken thatn fucking amalo.

  


Eweweiki`

I Think I Like him actually

  


strawberrygirl4729_X278A

Want to HAVE SEX for HOURS AT A TIME LONG ORGASM, yeah.... you know you WANT CZECH WOMEN OVER EMAIL@pzyz.za... Yeah

  


ForgottenDignity

and he fuckging decimates. everyone else is a fucking flash in the pan comgpared to amalo gogdamn.

  


Eweweiki`

Where`s your Proof of That? More like minute long, I think..

  


FUNNYONLINEGIFS27

What did I walk into o_O *backs away* XD

  


ForgottenDignity

i don’t gknow what the fuck treyard is thinkging with fuckging nerfging his fuckign speed instead of anything fuckging gelse because not the fucking prgoblem do they even fucking listgen to this goddamgn community i feel like im fuckgign speaking int

  


FUNNYONLINEGIFS27

Woah... everyone is typing at once wtf xD

  


ForgottenDignity

o a broken goddamn record or something idk im tired.

  


strawberrygirl4729_X278A

HAVE SEX OVER THE INTERNET

  


Eweweiki`

Is it Really hours long Orgasm,,...

  


strawberrygirl4729_X278A

E-SEX

  


Eweweiki`

Wow.... Maybe I`ll email you, sound nice..

  


ForgottenDignity

doesn't help that the admin of this server is pretending to be a sexbot instead of actually moderating.

  


strawberrygirl4729_X278A

Hours long ORGASM ON-LINE.... enter Google Wallet user and pswd for E-SEX ;o

  


ForgottenDignity

like a goddamn chameleon.

  


Eweweiki`

I Can send over DM....

It means Private Message, Sweetheart,.... Very Private

  


FUNNYONLINEGIFS27

Uh oh... is it just me, or is it getting a bit steamy in here XD ��

  


ForgottenDignity

it's direct message fucktard.

  


jerryo

Hey!

  


Eweweiki`

Do you Accept Paypal,

  


ForgottenDignity

oh thank god our savior is here.

  


strawberrygirl4729_X278A

Yo, jerryo!

  


jerryo

Yo yo yo

  


surfbro69

What’s groovin’, schmoozer?

  


jerryo

Not much, grommet!

  


Eweweiki`

Wait,

What Happened?

  


surfbro69

That’s hella smoothie, dude.

Strawberry girl is no more, Eweweiki`...

I go only by surfbro69 now.

  


ForgottenDignity

you two are embarrassing.

  


surfbro69

Did you catch the new Lamar mixtape, bro!? It’s pitted!!

  


jerryo

Yes! I did actually, it was really good

  


surfbro69

I reckon it’s his best yet, bro. Haters can disagree all they like but they can also suck my washboard ass!!

  


ForgottenDignity

kendrick lamar is fuckign annoying and i hate him.

the amount of times i've had to mute humble on the music channel drigves me up the fucking wall.

  


surfbro69

Listen up hater!!

  


jerryo

I thought you would have liked Kendrick, Dignity

  


surfbro69

Surfs up on the cheeks of my ass so get in line!!!

  


ForgottenDignity

why would you think that.

  


jerryo

Seems like your kinda thing?

  


ForgottenDignity

then you obviously don’t know me very well.

  


therecordscratch

It seems your name is apt, ‘ForgottenDignity’. For you have clearly misplaced your self-respect.

  


ForgottenDignity

do you ever shut the fuck up.

  


therecordscratch

Kendrick Lamar is the James Joyce of this generation. By his simultaneous embrace and subversion of the mainstays of hip-hop and rap, he has skillfully broken new ground in a previously stagnant industry.

  


ForgottenDignity

shut the fuck up shut the fguck up shugt tghe fuck up

  


jerryo

Haha okay that actually made no sense

  


hunieslop

What up fags.

Just got a 22:1 kd ratio with Amalo in some shitty zero support matchmake. Lads can’t touch me.

  


Eweweiki`

Aha,,! see what I Mean?

  


ForgottenDignity

i forgot everyone in this goddamn server plays fuckign shit characters.

  


hunieslop

Salty? �

  


ForgottenDignity

no.

scroll up douchebag i'm not repeating myself.

  


hunieslop

Someone’s a bit salty, I think. ����

  


ForgottenDignity

stop using that gay fuckign emoji are you actuallgy twelgeve fuckign years old.

  


hunieslop

�����������������

  


ForgottenDignity

i said stop.

  


hunieslop

�S�A�L�T�

  


ForgottenDignity

i said fuckgin stop dipshigt are you fugcking retgarded.

like agre you agctually fuckging brgaindead.

  


man

Alright.

  


hunieslop

My guy.

The g key. Keep your fat fingers away for one second.

  


man

Are we doing games night already?

  


the_bobo

YES FINALLY JESUS CHRIT IVE BEEN FRICCING SET UP FOR A HOUR

  


jerryo

Yes please

  


FUNNYONLINEGIFS27

You do game nights around here? :D

  


ForgottenDignity

as long as this douchebag isn’t playing then i'm in.

  


Eweweiki`

Yes,,... OK

  


man

We sure do funny-online-gifs-twenty-seven. Every Sunday of every week, 8:00PM eastern time.

  


the_bobo

I STAY UP VERY LATE TO MAKE THIS WORK OK

  


man

Tonight we’re playing a classic: Mario Party 7 for the Nintendo Gamecube. On an emulator. With a shitty online multiplayer mod.

  


ForgottenDignity

through hamachi.

  


man

Yep.

  


ForgottenDignity

why are we playing this.

  


the_bobo

GET IN THE VOICE CHANNEL

  


man

You demanded more retro games, dude.

  


ForgottenDignity

i said mock retro. like, hi-bit shit. indie mobas.

  


man

What?

  


hunieslop

How the fuck do you expect us to pick up some shitty hipster moba and learn it in a night?

  


ForgottenDignity

get off my fuckign case.

  


man

Jerry, you joining?

  


jerryo

Yes!

  


man

Good man.

  


—

  


man 

Get it, becau -

  


the_bobo 

\- AAAAAAHHHHHH oh theyre here

hi guys

  


ForgottenDignity 

hi bobo.

  


the_bobo 

hi

  


plumbob 

hello everyone!!

  


man 

What’s up gamers.

  


Eweweiki` 

Hello,. Everyb –

  


ForgottenDignity 

– so how do we set this thing up? does everyone have hamachi?

  


the_bobo 

wait whats hamachi?

  


man 

Not sure, actually. Why don’t we fuck around for half an hour to get it working?

  


jerryo 

Sounds great

  


ForgottenDignity 

that sounds terr –

  


*

  


the_bobo 

\- WOOOOOOOOOO GET OUTTA HERE DRY BOONNES

  


man 

No no no! Shi –

  


ForgottenDignity 

\- bobo stop trying to ram me off the fucking stage you’re pissign me off.

  


man 

It’s all on you now, Jer.

  


the_bobo 

oh no sorry dignity im –

  


man 

\- Oh, nope, you’re –

  


the_bobo 

\- i keep meaning to RUSSIAN MAN. HEY. HEY –

  


Eweweiki` 

\- Hey,... Stop Tha –

  


the_bobo 

\- OUTTA HEEERRRREEE HAHAHHAHAAHAAA WE FRICCIN WIN BABY

  


FUNNYONLINEGIFS27 

You guys are way better at this game than me XD

  


jerryo 

Haha bobo you really get into it

  


.

  


.

  


.

  


.

  


.

  


jerryo 

Hello?

  


ForgottenDignity 

did y –

  


FUNNYONLINEGIFS27 

\- X -

  


plumbob 

\- pl –

  


hunieslop 

\- the fu -

  


man 

Jerry?

  


jerryo 

God, lag

  


man 

You right? You went robot for a sec there.

  


hunieslop 

What the fuck even just happened?

  


man 

Australian Internet, methinks.

  


plumbob 

crikey!!!

  


hunieslop 

Wait, what the fuck? You’re an Aussie?

  


jerryo 

Yeah ha –

  


mate 

\- Awww!! He’s Aussie mate!!!

  


hunieslop 

For fucking real, you sound like you’re from the west coast. Like I –

  


the_bobo 

\- roll dice -

  


hunieslop 

\- a cousin with your exact accent.

  


jerryo 

Really? O –

  


hunieslop 

\- Yeah. Weird shit, right? God, you’re Australian. How do you even get internet there?

  


jerryo 

What?

  


the_bobo 

ROLL DICE

  


ForgottenDignity 

roll the fucking dice retard.

  


hunieslop 

God o-fucking-kay. Give me like a hot second, my setup’s fucked.

  


plumbob 

guys chill out!! take a chill pill!!! guys peace on earth :-)))

  


ForgottenDignity 

who even are you?

  


plumbob 

oh, me?? :-)

  


ForgottenDignity 

you just showed up with your new age bullshit like you’ve always been here.

  


plumbob 

haven’t we all always been here?? :0 when you think –

  


hunieslop 

\- Okay what the fuck is this.

  


man 

What’s up with your controller?

  


hunieslop 

It’s not my controller. Where the fuck is the star? No, wai -

  


the_bobo 

\- bowser time

  


hunieslop 

Ohhh fuck this game. Bowser can go suck my ass good lord.

  


ForgottenDignity 

this was two rounds ago dipshit.

  


hunieslop 

Suck my cock.

  


jerryo 

I don’t really get the hate for bowser time

  


plumbob 

i love it!! :-) woo

  


hunieslop 

You for real? It’s because he moves the stars around like a fucking douchebag.

  


jerryo 

It changes up the game though

  


hunieslop 

Yeah well I’m not a fucking game designer am I Jerry.

  


man 

I think hunieslop would rather Bowser suck his ass good lord than he would actually enjoy himself with a videogame.

  


hunieslop 

Yeah. Funny, admin. You’re a fucking riot. And I just went the wrong way, fantastic. Fanfuckingtastic.

  


plumbob 

i like bowser he –

  


hunieslop 

\- Goddamnit. –

  


plumbob 

\- spiky to look at!!!! :-P

  


surfbro69 

Don’t worry grom, I get the froth for the turtle king, ya hear me? He may not be too groovy on the surfboard, but he’s one hella bitchin’ serflord.

  


FUNNYONLINEGIFS27 

Uh oh, is it just me, or –

  


hunieslop 

Fuck off dude, I’m not a fucking faggot.

  


FUNNYONLINEGIFS27 

\- in here XD

  


hunieslop 

Stop making shitty jokes, you tryhard. They’re not funny. You’re not fucking funny.

  


plumbob 

woah guys peace on earth!!!!! :))

  


hunieslop 

The name changes are fucking annoying to everyone else who doesn’t want their user list shitting about every 5 seconds.

  


surfbro69 

Hunieslop, remember the respect rule.

  


ForgottenDignity 

oh god. –

  


hunieslop 

\- Does it look like I care about the fucking respect rule? You fucking antagonise me, say that shit about me, and I bite back. This is America, bro. You don’t get to decide how I use my free speech.

  


.

  


.

  


.

  


Eweweiki` 

Hail the American` Eagle,.. -

  


surfbro69 

\- Alright. -

  


the_bobo 

\- GOT ANOTHER STAR, NERDS. SAY GOODBYE TO BOBO HE IN THE BIG LEAGUES NOW

  


ForgottenDignity 

ahh fuck.

  


hunieslop 

Wait. Did he leave?

  


ForgottenDignity 

yeah he did.

| 

  


  


  


  


  


  


  


  


  


  


  


  


  


  


  


  


  


  


  


  


  


  


  


  


  


  


Truth or struth.

  


Wait, we’re still doing this?

  


Yeah, whatever. Conversation’s kind of died anyway.

  


Oh, yeah, sorry

  


Nah you’re right, you’re at your sleepy point. Sleepyhead.

  


Haha, ow

  


God, it’s cold out here.

  


Bit chilly, yeah

  


How high up are we even?

  


Pretty high for Brimmingstoke.

  


Service is still shit

  


Yeah.

  


But what’s your thing?

  


Oh God, yeah, forgot.

  


It’s a gay question.

  


Oh

  


So I mean, if you don’t want to talk about it –

  


Nah it’s fine

  


Good.

  


It’s basically this article I read that sounded a bit confronting, so I wanted a first-hand opinion from my one gay friend.

  


Brilliant

  


Your opinion better be good or I’m blaming you for my misunderstanding.

  


Awesome

  


What’s it about

  


It’s like this Buzzfeed article, but one of the good ones.

  


Right but what’s it about

  


God, I think I’m more hesitant to talk about it than you are.

  


Haha

  


It’s basically saying that using gay, and fag, and dyke and stuff like that online -- that it’s wrong, in any context, because a bunch of reasons and numbers. Or, well –

  


\- Ohh, fuck -

  


What? Oh –

  


\- I –

  


\- I just used them all didn’t I?

  


No, it’s just -- I hate arguments like that so fucking much

  


What, really? Why?

  


Or, well

  


.

  


.

  


I dunno

  


You dunno.

  


Yeah. It’s just like –

  


Dude. I was excited for some vicious rant. –

  


\- Hahaha -

  


\- don’t get angry enough.

  


Whenever I think about shit like that I get angry

  


Or like, really uncomfortable

  


Why?

  


I think it’s like

  


.

  


It’s like an impossible topic to talk about, I guess. And like, people try to get all broad with it when you can’t really do that with language

  


Right.

  


And like -- people try to paint the -- derogatory use of gay as this terrible thing of internalised homophobia that plagues our society

  


But I think people are just getting anal about this shit for no reason

  


Whoa. Okay.

  


Or, well

  


Uggghh fuck

  


Haha, sorry dude. Didn’t think you’d get so worked up.

  


Are there any more marshmallows?

  


We ate the rest of those like 30 minutes ago.

  


Noooooohooohoooo

  


Haha, we can –

  


It’s just like –

  


\- This is why I hate thinking about it, right, because I always think some shitty pricky thing and realise I’m an entitled douchebag

  


Like of course I can say these words are fine, because I’m just some fucking dude who doesn’t know what actual discrimination feels like

  


And how can I get upset about that shit when people are still using retard, and cunt, and a bunch of other trash

  


Is retard offensive?

  


Yeah

  


Well I’ve literally never heard cunt in a derogatory context. But I guess that’s an Australian thing.

  


Well that’s what I mean right? Context

  


Like, you can say gay to mean stupid, and you can say gay to mean gay, and it’s different. The same with fag

  


.

  


Surely you draw the line somewhere.

  


What do you mean?

  


Well, the article was saying that linking it with negativity regardless is the fucked up bit.

  


Right, but –

  


\- And I see people use fag like that more often than not.

  


.

  


.

  


Lachie

  


Right.

  


.

  


.

  


.

  


But I wasn’t really offended by that

  


You were pretty hurt though.

  


Not cause it was homophobic, though. He doesn’t even know I’m gay, and I don’t think I’m like, flamboyant enough for him to notice

  


It’s just like -- I think it was when he said it, and with my mum there  
  
---|---  
  
hunieslop 

Haha what a fucking prick. Like seriously, does anyone actually like that guy?

  


ForgottenDignity 

he's okay as far as admins go, i guess. i know jerry basically has a hard-on for him.

  


FUNNYONLINEGIFS27 

Oooohhhh saucy XD

  


jerryo 

Wait what?

  


Eweweiki` 

Don`t worry Jerry.. I was Fool Too,.

  


plumbob 

woa –

  


the_bobo 

\- RECOGNIZE MY TALENT AND SKILL

  


ForgottenDignity 

don’t you live in a group house, bobo? how do you not manage to wake your flatmates up?

  


the_bobo 

oh theyre used to it now. at this point i think they need my voice to able to sleep at night.

  


ForgottenDignity 

cool.

  


the_bobo 

i am the voice of upstairs the shrieking god hear my cries and let your cares drift away

  


Eweweiki` 

It`s All About the Shriek,..

  


hunieslop 

What the fuck are you people talking about?

  


the_bobo 

how cool i am

  


hunieslop 

Can we hit start on the minigame already?

| 

surfbro69

He’s such a goddamn asshole.

  


surfbro69

Should I ban him?

  


jerryo

Why’d you leave?

  


surfbro69

Because he’s being a goddamn asshole, Jerry. I’m not playing the shittenth instalment of some shitty franchise while a gaping goddamn asshole shits directly into my ear.

  


jerryo

Shittenth

  


surfbro69

Like seventh but shittier.

  


surfbro69

Should I ban him?

  


jerryo

You never ban people

  


surfbro69

Because no-one on this server has been as big of a stretched asshole as hunieslop over there.

  


surfbro69

Should I ban him?

  


jerryo

I dunno dude. You’re the admin

  


surfbro69

Jerry, come on. You’re so damn indecisive.

  


surfbro69

Surely you can agree he’s being a shitty, sloppy asshole and that I should swing down that sweet banhammer.

  


jerryo

I think you’re being a bit selfish

  


surfbro69

Wait, seriously?

  


.

  


jerryo

Like, obviously he’s kind of a dick

  


jerryo

But he’s a dick to everyone, it’s like he riles up people for fun

  


surfbro69

What are you saying?

  


jerryo

Well, I guess it’s just better to leave it be

  


surfbro69

For fucking real, dude? Just leave it be?

  


surfbro69

He’s terrorising everyone and you just want me to leave it be.

  


.

  


jerryo

I guess I mean like, you didn’t do anything before, so

  


surfbro69

I’m trying to do something fucking now, dude.

  


jerryo

I don’t think I’m explaining myself right

  


surfbro69

No, I think I hear you loud and clear.

  


surfbro69

You don’t give a shit. This cocksucker is abusing your only friend on this server and you don’t give a shit.

  


jerryo

Wait, are you not joking

  


jerryo

This isn’t a bit?

  


surfbro69

Wow, fuck you, man. Actually fuck you.

  


surfbro69

I’m not banning you, because I’m not an asshole, but don’t come on the server anymore.

  


surfbro69

Goodnight. Or good morning, or whatever the fuck it is for you right now. Bye Jerry.

  


jerryo

What?

  


.

  


.

  


.

  


jerryo

Wait what?

  


.

  


jerryo

Wait I’m sorry, I don’t get it

  


.

  


.

  


jerryo

I don’t get it just help me understand what I did wrong

  


.

  


.

  


.

  


jerryo

Are you online?

  


.

  


.

  


.

  


.

  


.

  


surfbro69

Noooooo! You’re kidding! So he’s not actually a candidate, then.

  


.

  


jerryo

Huh?

  


.

  


.

  


jerryo

Oh

  


.

  


jerryo

No, I guess not

  


surfbro69

Aw man. You got my hopes up, dude. I did the whole sorority girl thing for nothing. –

  


  


– Hahaha –

  


  


– made him sound so perfect, too. “He’s cute. He’s funny. He’s charming. He really helps expand my mind. He’s a missionary of light. No, he’s not a cult leader. Really.” But he’s straight as a board.

  


.

  


  


Straight as a board

  


.

  


.

  


.

  


.

| 

Yeah that was a pretty dick move on his part.

  


I think -- I think it makes me more uncomfortable than it hurts me, I guess

  


Like –- I’ll be in some game, and someone will just like throw gay out and then keep talking

  


But meanwhile I’m stuck there, because it –

  


\- It feels like I’ve been called out, and I have something to answer for

  


And I always look over my shoulder, to make sure my mum isn’t -- haha -- to make sure my mum isn’t somehow like, listening in

  


And it sucks because, I can’t just like say hold up, cool tools, you can’t say that because it makes me feel weird, even if I wanted to

  


Haha, right.

  


Because things go so fucking fast. And if I bring it up then I’m the nuisance, and I’m the buzzkill, because they’re just joking

  


Because everyone’s just fucking joking, all the time, because we’re all just fucking stand-up comedians

  


I th -

  


\- I feel like I’m not myself anymore. I’m just acting and pleasing these people I like barely know

  


But how the fuck can I make good to 7 voices blaring in my ear at the same time when I can’t even make good to myself

  


Y -

  


\- I can type in lowercase, but then I’m fucking suicidal

  


I can end my sentence in a full stop, but then I look like a fucking sociopath

  


Who the fuck am I?

  


Do I ask too many questions?

  


You’re like a counsellor to me Joyce

  


Is that weird?

  


You’re so nice to talk to

  


Why does it happen?

  


.

  


.

  


I always blamed myself for it, like I could somehow be more for you

  


And I always think back to now, and I think, I talked too much

  


And that’s the reason you left me

  


You left because I talked too much, and you got bored

  


Which is the stupidest fucking thought in the world. You’d laugh at me if I told you

  


.

  


.

  


But at least it’s real  
  
---|---|---  
  
The sedan trundles on, the rumble of the engine humming vibrations up from the floor, and the rolling of the wheels jolting the chassis. The new Lamar mixtape, bro, plays faintly a bubbly synth from the front speakers and muffled, bassily, from the back.

‘So,’ Jerry mumbles vacantly, his eyes glued to the road. He swallows. He doesn’t dare look to the passenger seat. Instead, he’s almost squinting he’s so focused, and his teeth are almost drawing blood from his lip. He isn’t tense because he knows this isn’t real, but because he knows there’s no memory to replace what’s happened here. He can’t search the annals of his mind and open up to the true event, the true drive into east-side. No. It’s been taken out, if it ever was there. Omitted.

The track ends, that bubbly synth echoing away into darkness.

It’s just that rumbling now. Jerry can feel the vibrations more potently now that the sound is gone. That rapid sawtooth shiver, pining up his legs, up his hips, between the ribs of his ribcage and into his heart. He glances cautiously at the radio. It’s blinking: CD IN. CD IN. CD IN. There’s another song on the album, the next one should be playing already. With a backwards sigh -- just the intake -- he stares back at the road.

The sun is really coming down now. He can feel its glare on the back of his neck peering through the gap between the headrest and the seat. But it feels cold. Searing cold, boiling water cold, like all the warmth in the blood vessels of his neck have been sucked dry. Like a leech to a vein. Like a mosquito, unknowingly, to your forearm. He shifts in his seat. Like a battery to a solid-state. Like a cable to an Ethernet port. Like a siren to a --

Jerry’s eyes widen, and with a quick jab of his foot he slams on the brakes and stalls the car -- his eyes catch stars as his chest tightens -- there’s a screeching of rubber against asphalt that sounds somehow distant from inside the sedan as Jerry braces himself against the wheel -- a violent jolt and he feels pain spring from his tongue -- and the car comes to a stop.

His breath comes out in a few ragged gasps as he places his fingers on the latch. There’s a beeping. With a few fumbled pulls --

he tries to get his breathing under control but he feels something funny rattling his ribcage

\-- the door wavers open with a squeak, and he stumbles out, clutching the frame for balance. He wipes his bleary eyes, and takes a step forward.

He’s breathing through his nose, now. His sneakers make a shuffling squelch as he moves. Another step. The breeze picks up, whistles in his ear. It’s warm, and disturbingly even, as if blown from an electric fan. Another step, and, sensing that the road won’t collapse under his feet, he stumbles down its length.

Stops.

And nearly falls to his knees.

Ahead of him is the end of the world. The road as he knew it, with its markings and its wear, came to a stop shortly after he passed the town hall. It’s featureless now, almost textureless, and as he looks ahead he sees that it culminates with the hills into a point, not quite grassy, not quite stony -- a point, too precise to identify its material. The sight is sharp on the dry horizon.

Another gasp of wind. This time it’s wet, and his eyes squirm shut involuntarily. He can feel the saliva on his neck, can sense something behind him. A machine. He can picture it in his mind’s eye like he could the modern constructs on the roof of the school building: all jagged, geometrical, draping cables and blinking cathode tubes. A receptacle, somewhere on the side, that he can reach into and pull, pull, pull.

A humming. More breath, this time bringing spittle and red salt that burrows into the roots of his hair. A creaking like a ship’s hull as it leans in, and somewhere, maybe over those low hills into the void, a throaty whistling.

He’s holding his breath again. He can’t let go. He can’t let go, but he can look back, if he’s careful. He can, if he tries. He has to see, so he turns around.

And sees a face with its beard made out of cloud and its eyes, the stars.

  


.

  


.

  


.

  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Voice chat icon made by [Freepik](https://www.flaticon.com/authors/freepik) from [www.flaticon.com](https://www.flaticon.com).


	10. 7

## 7

A start. A jump. A scream.

Jerry’s eyelids twitch open. Darkness. His pupils, as if they’re trying to squeeze light out of the room—as if they’re in REM—jitter without his knowledge; they mime out those memories, as if to replicate them, understand them. The liquorice stars. The conversation on Cacophochat. That face, with the cloudy beard, and the starry eyes. The breath. Jerry shudder-sighs, his ribcage fluttering as he does so, and squints against the gloom.

He knows where he is, intuitively, because he’s been here before. There’s a pair of double doors to his right just barely visible as his pupils dilate, and a pair to his left that aren’t—all are closed. There’s a chandelier overhead that might glint green if he shone his light on it if he could. There’s a huddle of red-upholstery armchairs smelling faintly of rot, one he’s sitting on already. There’s a glass cabinet with teapots and teacups and saucers, more china, and a side-table holding a triangle of Bakelite billiard balls of all numbers and all colours. It was only a few of these that he took, because he only needed a few, when he walked back to the billiards room. The thought of billiards wakes his heart; it beats against his ribcage now, harder, harder, and he needs to do something, and where is the flashlight. He fumbles around himself, feels the fabric, the buttons on the armrests—he freezes—feels something push against jeans. He reaches into his pocket, pulls out the flashlight and flicks it on, shines a bright cone on a patch of wallpaper near the right doors. He sweeps it—cordovan, emerald glint, mahogany; the more he sees, the more the magnitude of his current situation lays bare on his mind.

Where is the backpack?—not on the chair, and not at his feet.

Where is the monster?—he’s startled by a shadow made by his light, but it’s just a lamp, a crinkly parasol lamp. He doesn’t know, and he doesn’t think twice about calling it a monster.

Where is Joyce?

He stands, and his legs stiffen and kink beneath him. His left shin bumps the coffee table (he starts again, goes to apologise, but the words die smilelessly on his lips) and with his right, takes him awkwardly to the doors of the billiards room and then those of the antechamber.

They open, as they did before, soundlessly. There is only the faint click of the doorknob, the languid _swish!_ as the air is swept away. He understands what Joyce meant by her want for creaky shit now; without it, the Bluff doesn’t feel old, antique, lived-in—any of the sensations that brought so much excitement and intrigue to their urban exploration back when. So it feels cold. Alien. Not inhabited but inhabitable, like he’s the invader of some future family home. He shivers at the thought, thinking subconsciously of the day his home in west-side was broken into when he was younger.

As he steps through, he expects that putty monster to be lurking near the door to the entrance hall in the back of his mind, but in the front, that impulsive, adrenalised front that he now feels himself able to exercise, he instead hopes for Joyce. He gets neither.

Instead, the room is much the same as it was when he and Joyce were having their tiff earlier. There’s the mirror-table next to the kitchen doors; there’s the table he remembers falling against (he rubs his head); there’s the frilled rug in the middle of the room, which—though he thinks nothing of it—is bare. It is not streams but slants of blue light that pierce the porch-door window now, and he wonders, in the back of his mind, as he slips his hand into his pocket—how much time has really passed.

He pulls it out; it’s a two-generations-ago iPhone, but it works fine. He hopes for service. Getting it in Brimmingstoke can be a bit of a gamble, something about the town’s overall signal output—another reason we should get kids off their smartphones, according to the council. He gets it though—two bars—dials Joyce, and puts his ear to the receiver.

It dials once, twice. He stands there, slumped slightly against the slants, his left hand gripped to his right forearm. He breathes in, out—it’s steady, but there’s that fluttering in his ribs again. His brow furrows. He takes the phone away from his ear as it continues to dial, then angles his neck and stares absently at the corner between wall and ceiling.

Upstairs, an Android on the floor of the attic lights up, flashes the profile of a grey silhouette in the darkness, and vibrates. A tune escapes, chewed and mangled, out the confines of its speaker-slit. It’s not the generic soothing marimba that comes as the default ringtone. It sounds dead. It’s tinny, bitcrushed, as if muffled by several physical mounds of static interference. The phone vibrates along the floorboards, bumps against something metal, then stops.

Jerry hears all this faintly reverberating throughout the structure of the manor in the quiet. He hears it ring, and stop—he puts the phone to his ear again and pulls it away. It timed out. So, with a rattling sigh, he goes to drop his phone in his pocket—but stops himself. He looks at it, twirls it in his palms—there’s someone else he needs to call, surely. He can feel it, not in that little voice in the back of his mind, but that voice in the front—so he holds it in hand as he walks through into the entrance hall, as that new voice begins speaking to him directly. He quickly realises that the voice is his own.

 _I need to find Joyce_ , it says. _She’s somewhere up there_ , it says. _I need to find her_.

The voice is all action, all exclamation. _Jesus_ , it says. _That thing must have dragged her, head knocking, up the stairs. Jesus_ , it says.

He walks past the staircase, past some framed paintings in the gloom depicting old people and old places—an elderly woman with jewels on her knuckles, a plein air of a garden out the front of an English cottage. His legs, his impulse, take him past, but if he had been looking, he might have cautiously observed the way the staircase rug drapes neatly over the steps like rubbery lava; he might have observed more closely the plein air and the caption embossed, in small lettering, on a brass-painted-gold plaque underneath:

 

Mr. Walsh’s Garden

Basingstoke

18--

 

But he is feeling remarkably on top of things, so he doesn’t care to notice. His breathing is fine, and he feels like he can get a better read on his thoughts than he’s been able to the past couple of weeks.

The bust to the left of the staircase passes him in the dark, and his feet set him in front of the stair. As his phone twirls in his right hand, he observes parts of the room absently with the flashlight in his left, his jacket rustling a dull whisper as he does so.

The wrecked spider sends bare-white silken stars into the corners of the room.

The dining room doors, the ones that sounded like levers as they opened, are shut and unresponsive to the shining light. He thinks of the curtains, and the verdant streak that spliced the table as they talked like they used to. He smiles.

The vestibule doors are still wide open, so the light flows through seamlessly to construct two angled shadow-spotlights against the shut-tight entrance door.

He frowns. Still?

He can almost see the pocked yard beyond, the iron-lace gate, his sedan. He can almost feel the green sun again, stretching hot shadows like tapeworms across the grass—but he knows it is down now, down below his feet somewhere, vibrating the earth and the ground and the floor with a radiant energy.

He can imagine, in the back of his mind, reaching for the doorknob, twisting it, and—

The phone vibrates.

He looks down, climbs the staircase absentmindedly, waiting for the front of his mind to tell him what to do. But no direction comes. The window-eye stares moonlit at his back. He turns on the screen; floods his face with light; sees the Skalpel notification.

  


| Yo, Jer.  
I've been meaning to ask. What's up with your profile pic? | 11:47PM  
---|---|---  
  
  



	11. IIII

## IIII

His shoulders squared and his left hand shaped in an open bridge, Joseph prepares the stroke. His stance is low; his legs bent only subtly at the knees. His face is focused, stern, almost solemn, as he slides the cue along the web between his thumb and forefinger and strikes the velvet end against his cue ball.

It rolls, the black spot on its surface rolling with it. The stroke was not perfect, but it gave him what he wanted: it hits Arthur’s ball with a soft click, then the object ball with another, and with a slight, red blur, the object is potted into the left-most pocket of the baulk.

‘Five points, Father,’ identifies Roy. He is sitting cross-legged on a chair in front of the fireplace, watching the game intently with his chin resting on his clasped hands. ‘That makes one-hundred-and-eight points for Morris and fifty-one for Aborigines,’ he calls. Roy attempts to make eye-contact with his father for a moment, and then looks down at his fingers.

Joseph reaches into the pocket and pulls out the object ball. Moving past Arthur, who is leaning on his cue in front of the parlour door under the oil-light, he re-spots the ball, adjusts its position slightly with the length of his cue, and then moves to position near the left corner of the baulk. His trousers shuffle against each other with the movement, filling the space with not only the warm notes of the flickering fire but the dream-like sound of leather rubbed against quality leather.

It is, at the least, dream-like to Roy. He struggles against his instincts, willing his jaw not to stretch open and yawn. A part of him yearns for bed; wants only to slip into his nightclothes and fall asleep among the warm blankets and cushions,—but another wants to stay, wants to stay sitting here with his father and the servant as they play billiards until they, too, grow tired enough to stop. The fireplace is warm enough. If only he could bring a blanket down and cosy up to the flames, calling out points between the slits of his half-closed eyes as he treads that sweet spot between consciousness and slumber.

But he would feel like such a _child_.

Joseph prepares the next stroke. Stretching his arms out once again, he moves down on the cue and pulls it back along the web. This would have hit Arthur in the breast if the servant was less careful; instead, he has moved nearer to Roy and the fireplace, next to the parlour doors, the sides of his shortened hair imbued with an ember glow against the bare wall at his back. Joseph weaves the cue along the web, slighting it right of the centre of Arthur’s cue ball, and then follows through the stroke. Arthur’s ball plummets into the right-side pocket while Joseph’s continues, the spot taking dips in the felt like a dolphin would dive in and out of the water, or a marble would draw lines on a paint-splattered canvas. If this spot was ink, one would see dotted lines, complex in their angles and length, linking and connecting the rails and balls and threads of the felt, and,—occasionally,—the pockets.

Joseph’s cue ball misses the object. His English had angled it too far left, it seems.

Exhaling deeply, he moves to the left of the table as Arthur moves to its top-right corner.

‘Four points, Father,’ identifies Roy. ‘That makes one-hundred-and-ten points for Morris and fifty-one for Aborigines,’ he calls.

‘Okay, Roy,’ says Joseph. His voice begins low but intonates high at the end of the sentence, as if he is laboured to even say the words. Roy looks at him briefly and then back to the game, his fingers tightening, a subtle frown crossing his face.

His cue ball being as close to the object and the left rail as it is, Joseph needs to be creative with his stroke. Instead of an open bridge position he switches to one closed, wrapping his index finger around the cue. His posture has altered to something closer to a hunch as it reaches up to the ceiling, making him appear as a native hunter would if he was spearing fish from a running stream.

He threads back the cue.

‘Oh, Father!’ exclaims Roy, his mouth agape and his right index finger pointed upward like an open umbrella. Joseph’s head slides toward him. ‘I counted wrong. It’s—’

‘Two points,’ interrupts Joseph, his hands still in the spearing position. ‘I know, Roy. I can count.’

He blinks and tilts his head away. ‘That makes one-hundred-and-eight points for Morris and fifty-one—’

‘For Aborigines.’ Joseph sighs, shakes his head, and cocks his neck to look down the length of the cue again. ‘You are interrupting your father’s concentration, Roy. Go to bed. It is far too late for you to be staying up, besides.’

Roy sits there, his face blank and his legs tucked under the chair. The finger is a closed umbrella now, angled and scraping the hangnail of his—

‘Roy,’ orders Joseph. ‘Bed. Now.’ His eyes do not move from the tip of his cue.

With a thick, heavy sniff and a draw of the head, Roy slips from his chair and rushes past Arthur, out of the room. The doors leading to the antechamber close behind him with a clunk, and beyond that, the muffled sound of the back porch door swinging open and slamming shut.

Arthur looks from the doors to Joseph. He watches him breathe in, and out, through his nose; he watches his eyes squint shut with dull ferocity.

They open again. His index finger tightens around the spear.

He strikes.

And Joseph follows the ball, his eyes twitching and reflecting the green, and the blurred white, and the diving dolphin spot, and the static, unmoving object red that appears, tauntingly, almost rooted in the felt.

He shoots a hard chuckle down and out through his nostrils. His head droops for a moment, and then he rolls his shoulders and comes up to a standing position, releasing the muscles of his back and his neck.

Joseph tosses his cue on the surface of the table and storms, one hand running through the lengths of his hair, out of the room.

…

There are only the flickers of the fire, now. That, and a shadowy, invisible force which shrugs, packs away the cues and the balls, moves the chair back into place and drapes the cloth over the billiards table.

He may as well be invisible.

‘Minnie,’ cracks Joseph. He is crouched on the back porch steps next to his seated daughter, his back against the open door. It is dim out, but not quite dark; streams of green still float in from the west. The air is breezy, pleasant, and in another context, it might feel quite exciting. The perfect quality for a stroll along a scenic patch of English countryside.

Joseph clears his throat. ‘Did you see your brother storm out here?’

Minnie is picking at the grass at the base of the steps. ‘He’s sitting under the willow tree. Don’t you see, Father?’

Joseph looks out at the yard, and sees that Roy is indeed sitting under the willow tree, his feet brought up onto the settle. He cannot see his son’s face between the hanging willow leaves, but he believes that his head is planted into his knees.

He frowns and tries a joke. ‘Ah. We really should have those leaves trimmed, should we not?’ He swallows, and a moment passes. ‘Akin to a… The beards, of a thousand old, haggard men.’

‘Mother wouldn’t like that,’ replies Minnie, still tugging at the grass blades. ‘She wants it to look as the willow and settle did at the old estate.’ She considers this for a moment. ‘I agree. I thought it was nice.’

‘Your grandmother used to sit under it with you and read nursery rhymes, did she not?’ reminisces Joseph.

‘Yes,’ she says, resting her blushed cheeks on her palms and gazing out at the willow. ‘I think that’s why I want it to stay as it is. It reminds me of her. And the manor.’ Minnie tilts her head to the side, and sighs.

The streams shift and lower as the green sun descends below the horizon. They meet at the willow and settle, play with the flickers of blue piercing the lower peripheries of the bush, creating something near to the murky fog of a swamp bed: something low, roiling, ethereal,—teal.

Joseph stands. ‘Okay, Minnie. I believe it is late enough.’

She looks up at him, coughs thrice. ‘Oh, Father…’

He tilts her chin with a finger and kisses her on the forehead. ‘Go to bed, sweetheart. I do not want you growing sicker than you are.’ He moves down the steps and onto the grass, then turns around. ‘Arthur will escort you,’ he says, gesturing to the open doorway in which Arthur now stands, hands tucked behind the small of his back. Joseph shares with him a glance, and then walks along the yard to the willow and settle at its far centre.

Arthur takes two steps forward on the boards of the porch, and stops. ‘Would you like to stand up and walk to your room with me, Minnie?’

‘No,’ she sighs, and then submits, resignedly, ‘but I will do as Father asks.’ She stands, takes Arthur’s hand and walks with him back into the house. The door shuts behind them with a squeak.

The entrance hall is proud, bright and wide at this point in the evening. The ambient shadows under the stairwell give away to the warm, creamy light of the sconces, lamps, and the hanging emerald chandelier that watches over the manor’s entrance. At morning, light pours through the eye and reflects verdant shards off of its gaslight bulbs. What a fantastic sight, indeed,—but, equally, what a disorienting one. While it is at morning that the hall comes alive, it is at night, when the sun is down and the family tired, that it becomes liveable, comfortable, and readily deciphered.

Whilst the Morris Estate has never truly been his home, Arthur feels at home here nonetheless. It is, after all, all that he has known; he does not remember his family, nor his community, nor, truly, the land that he was born within. All that of which he knows about his previous life was handed down from his adoptive father, and all that of which he knows about his identity and his race,—those mechanisms which are supposed to dictate who he is, how he acts, and what he will become,—have been relayed to him by the voices of people with lighter skin than his, and those with more power than he will ever attain. Who is he to combat those voices? Who is he to say there is a reason, a goal, a _justification_ to fight such treatment when it allows such comfort?

‘May I see Mother before we go upstairs?’ asks Minnie, motioning to the parlour doors.

‘I do not think that would be wise, Minnie,’ says Arthur. ‘Your mother is afflicted with something currently. Though she would surely labour to hear your voice, it is likely best that she is not disturbed for her overall health.’

Minnie nods, coughs. Walking beneath the hanging, pointed arms of the glinting chandelier, they ascend the stairwell.

A quiet, for a moment.

‘Joseph!’ she cries. ‘ _Joseph_!’

Helen is slumped on a leather chair within the parlour, the fingers of her left hand rubbing her temple and those of her right clasped tightly around a half-drained wine glass. Her breathing is shallow, void of much energy or vigour, and her eyes are squinted shut against the glare of the emerald chandelier overhead. She whimpers, sniffs. She takes a sip of her wine, then a gulp,—and then pulls back her head to empty the glass entirely. Her face is a red heat as it falls down again: embarrassed, uncomfortable, almost startled by her own behaviour,—and it is with a low, sighing moan that she settles the glass on the coffee table, leans her elbow against the arm of the chair, and begins to rub and stretch the corners of her eyes with her index and thumb.

She thinks of home,— _Taylor Manor_ ,—as she has done each day since their arrival at the estate nearly two months ago. Thoughts cross her mind of its grandeur and architectural prowess, of its square, solid, rising towers and magnificent spread wings. She dreams of the countless rooms: some empty, many used for specific purposes both relevant and lost to the roots of her ancestral tree, the Taylorline, but most born anew from that irrelevancy, repurposed into uses both contemporary and traced in the antique. Her own bedroom, that which she slept and awoke fresh in every morning since infancy, was once a cool, preservative larder. The drawing room, which availed a fantastic view of the expansive, beautiful courtyard, was once a boudoir. The underground library, that wealth of knowledge, serviced as an undercroft.

She could go on.

Helen dreams of these rooms, these countless, innumerable rooms, that appear to stretch out to infinite, kaleidoscopic patterns in her mind, breaking the barriers of physicality and traversing the ancestry of the estate with bounding, uniting leaps. It gives her comfort to remember such history and know she is the latest participant in its workings,—until sleep is taken from her at the rise of the green sun, and she is left to ponder and reminisce, rather than absorb and live anew.

A manor has history. The _Taylor Manor_ has history. The Morris? A beautiful construction, certainly. A piece of art, arguably, one reflecting an astrological duality as old as time.

But a manor?

The Morris is contemporary. It is sleek and impressionist in its design. It is beautiful, yet unable to penetrate deep into a unified, historical consciousness.

The Morris is not a manor. It is a superficial parody of one: something large, potential, denied of greater meaning and condensed into a mansion.

It is a trick.

There are the sounds of creaking footsteps on the front porch of the manor. A man with balding hair and thick glasses peers in through to the empty, illuminated dining room, then sets himself at the step of the entrance door. He pulls his cardigan down and over his stomach, then slams down the doorknocker.

One of the doors connecting the entrance hall to the parlour opens partway and creaks to a stop, revealing the shoulder of Joseph. He turns slightly, still holding the knob, then sighs and mumbles something to Roy. Helen deciphers tonally the mandatory exchange of goodnights, the creaking of the stairwell boards, and then watches as Joseph pulls fully the door open and steps inside the frame. His eyes are wearied.

‘How are you feeling, Helen?’ he asks. There is a sense of dejection in his voice, as if he has already foreseen the outcome of this conversation.

‘Fantastic,’ she claims, raising her chin above her hand and leaving the latter to droop lethargically. ‘I have drunken an entire bottle of wine. I have _imbibed_ so much wine, Joseph, that I feel like my head is going to burst of it. And you know how much _healthier_ wine makes my head feel.’

‘You are the healthiest woman I have ever laid witness to, my dear.’

The corner of her mouth curls up into a smile. ‘Exactly.’

Joseph smiles back grimly. He looks down at his shoes and the carpet underneath, then back at his wife. ‘You’ve been thinking of England again.’

‘Does it bear repeating?’

‘No,’ he says. ‘I suppose not.’

She chuckles and knocks her head back against the chair. It is a harsh chuckle, red, and fire-licked.

There is another knock at the door. This one is louder than the one which came before: two rapid knocks, and then a forceful third that shakes the frame. Joseph tilts his head to yell something at it that Helen is unable to hear. She cannot seem to hear very far past the walls of this room, as if there is some sort of metaphysical dampening sphere around her figure.

Joseph tilts back.

‘Why did we come here, Joseph?’ Helen asks. ‘Remind me? I oft forget our motivation.’

He sighs and looks down at the floor again, his head unmoving but his eyelids directing his focus. A soft current,—wind, now, surely, not just a mere breeze,—rattles the window and sounds an eerie howl.

‘Joseph,’ she repeats.

‘Does it matter?’ he says, gesturing forward. ‘Does it matter our reasoning? We are here now, Helen. We are here in the _present_ , and we have left that past behind. There is no use in giving up that which we have now developed after mere _months_.’

‘I have not developed but one thing except a dependence on red wine, my dear.’

His voice has edge. ‘That is not a product of this country but a product of your unwillingness to accept it.’ He shakes his head. ‘Honestly, Helen, you are acting hysterical in the face of nothing much.’

‘And you continue to use that word as if I am ill for craving English soil under my feet,’ she bites. ‘Though perhaps I am. Perhaps our daughter’s illness is a plague going through the rounds and I am the next to die. At least I will have met my end by the phlegm of a Briton rather than the sting of some horse-fly or the suffocation by the very sun in our sky.’

Her voice bounces back off the dampened walls with surprising conviction and hostility. Helen blinks, and with a low, sighing moan, collapses her head against the chair’s back and passes out.

Joseph is gone. She didn’t hear the door slam.

…

Helen awakes to a high, metallic ringing sensation, one not aural, but physical. She can hear the ringing in her hips. She can hear the ringing in the back of her neck. It is not a vibration. It is, she realises, a sound, transformed through some arcane process into a material form that is not so much felt by her bones as it is heard by them.

She knows this feeling, somehow.

A memory stirs, of a ship. A memory has stirred, of a ship, on a wave. A memory will stir, of a pirate, on a ship, on a wave, with froth for a beard, and his other hand, his hook, tucked below the small of his back like a tail.

A memory stirred, and her pupils dilated.

She stood in a passageway of mossy flags. She breathed, and her inhalations echoed in her ears. The air was at once rotten and alive,—undead,—both stale and flurried with rushing, coursing wind that seemed intent on pulling her unkempt hair back into a tidy, feminine bun. The passageway should, in all, be very familiar to our reader exempting two small differences.

For both, they may consider the small room in which Helen has now entered. They will see a darkened space to the east where the mirror, wood and candle stalks could be seen residing during the previous visit. These were indeed still there upon Helen’s arrival, but it seemed that either nobody had taken the care to provide them light, or something had blown said light out. Thus, Helen did not care to notice the mirror in which she may have seen the ghost of her soon to be dead daughter, and instead continued her gaze further north. This is where our reader may observe the second difference. At the edge of this room, on a cobblestone wall, was a small cushion hung high in upright fashion, on a nail hammered into the stone. It was not high enough that Helen was required to crane her neck to observe it, but her neck was besides snapped backward in shock. The cushion was an intricate design, featuring prominently a heart-shaped embossment at its centre in which was placed a carved daguerreotype of none other than Mrs Helen Morris, daughter of Sir Charles Taylor, husband to the wealthy Joseph Morris and mother to a dying daughter. Surrounding this depiction were other sentimental icons and patterns drawn in seashells, including hearts, stars, waves, anchors, and lashed eyes. These were, perhaps, more sentimental to the one who embroidered the cushion than the recipient of it.

The cushion was hung above a doorway carved into the wall that stretched a corridor north an indeterminable distance and then cut right. This is not distinct to the previous appearance of the passageway, but may indeed be unfamiliar to our reader nonetheless.

There were two lights at the end of the corridor that flashed a piercing red alternately in the dim. This was, Helen observed, the source of the ringing. There was a small silver mechanism like a teardrop placed between the lights that was illuminated only in parts by the glow.

It was a bell, Helen realised. It was telling her to wait because something had just passed through.

Helen waited.

‘Yes. What is it.’

The man with the balding hair stands effeminately in the face of Joseph, his back in a slight hunch, his hands rubbing about each other greasily in the oily night air like the legs of a fly.

‘Yes?’ Joseph repeats.

‘Ah!’ he exclaims, pushing up his glasses. ‘S-Sorry to disturb you, at such a late hour.’ He shifts his weight, procuring a soft creak from the porch below.

‘There was not much to disturb, if I am to be frank.’

‘Ah! Aha!’ He tries a grin, but it falls flat on his face in an instant. It appears to have exerted much of his energy, because he begins swiping his glistening forehead with a handkerchief and exhaling deeply out of his flared nostrils.

‘Will you get to the point—’ Joseph says, ‘—or need I bounce this door off of your bulbous forehead?’

He gets to it. ‘There has been a disturbance, sir. In town,’ he says, and takes a breath. ‘One of the peripheral communities caused some issues with a resident. We are afraid it might turn to violence if it is not dealt with promptly.’

Joseph stares at him, then down at the horse-drawn carriage beyond the parted gate in the dim moonlight. He sighs, mutters something under his breath.

‘This wouldn’t happen,’ exasperates the man, ‘if we improved our assimilation policies. We need to be forceful with these types of people or they are never going to be accepted into society.’

‘That is a state issue.’

‘Yes, but—’

‘It is out of my control,’ he finishes. ‘I will join you in a moment.’

The man gestures backward to the carriage. ‘Ah,—I will just—’ he starts.

The door is shut in his face.

Joseph takes to the stairs, dragging the fingers of one hand atop its railing. The carpeted steps are soft under his shoes, giving way to the mumbling creak of the wooden boards below. It is impossible to be discreet in this house, Joseph realises. Everything squeaks, or creaks, or reverberates with the slightest touch. All of this _noise_ : it is an assault to the eardrums.

The grandfather clock tick-tocks into focus as he reaches the landing. He faces a corridor which meets the length of the house, with doors leading to bedrooms and auxiliaries on either side. A cordovan rug threads its middle, leading to the clock, and behind it, a circular window looking out into the back yard.

Joseph turns an immediate left around the railing toward the door closest, directing himself to the room above the parlour. He splays his hand, twists the knob, and peeks inside. The door, abnormally, does not creak with the effort.

‘Will you read me a story, Arthur?’

‘I do not think that would be wise, Minnie.’

‘Why is that so?’

Arthur is seated on a stool next to Minnie’s bed, his back straightened and his hands clasped in his lap. His reach-me-downs and loosely-woven grey shirt contrast against the pastel tones and porcelain materials of her room.

He tilts his head slightly down and to the right. ‘I would think that your father would rather take the privilege of reading to you bedtime stories. You are running out, after all.’

‘Of bedtimes, you mean.’

Arthur pauses. ‘Of stories.’ He gestures to the bookshelf perpendicular to her bed. ‘Only one or two Hans Christian Andersons, along with a few miscellanea.’

‘Those seem terrible.’

‘Did Helen never tell you not to judge a book by its cover?’

‘She only ever says that about people, not books.’

Joseph brings his head back, and with the slight curling of his fingertips, closes the door silently.

He holds the knob for a few moments. His face is pensive, drifted off to face the whitened bust which stands resolutely at the end of the hallway. The air of the second floor suddenly feels very humid against his cheeks, and the sconce near his forehead suddenly all too bright.

He shuts his eyes. He sees stars dance as he listens to the muffled chatter and occasional laughter of Arthur and Minnie beyond the door. He squints, sniffs, breathes in sharply with a shudder, his chest rising up and his neck tilting down, and lets his hand slip away.

With a long, slow exhalation, he descends the stairs, grabs his hat and coat from the rack in the vestibule, berates the man, closes the door, walks through the gateway, closes the gate, closes the door to the horse-drawn carriage, closes the palms of his hands over his eyes and slams them shut.

.

.

.

The lights turned green.


	12. ?

## ?  
∗∗\--


	13. 8

## 8

It was a click-clucking, not a tick-tocking.

The grandfather clock stood at the end of the dim hallway before the window: thick, curved and strong. Given some tuning and a little mechanical work, it mightn’t have sounded so verging on its death throes. Not enough oil on the hammer axle. Too much dust in the clockwork.

Footsteps. Bounding ones. They were far, then close, then far again.

There was a long, rectangular rug leading from the grandfather clock, past the doors and doorknobs and little tables and wall-trims, over to the staircase leading down to the first floor. The rug was tattered, more unkempt, nearer the clock than it was further down the hallway, and yet somehow, it was more colourful. It shifted from a bright green to a dull red as it continued down the wood panels, and met a head with feet leaping recklessly up the stairs three at a time that collapsed just a few steps from the top.

It tried, and failed, to continue climbing with just its hands and its knees, and then kneeled there, gasping for breath. Clutching onto the carpet so as not to fall down, the figure brought itself up to a fore, revealing the face of a near-adult, and with a few heaves along the length of the banister it began to climb again with heavy breaths.

Joyce wanted to vomit more than she wanted to run. Her chest and stomach were so contracted, so tight, she thought she might puke out a couple ribs. The oppressive dark wasn’t helping, impenetrable but for the faint sparks of green that danced on her vision, somehow illuminating both the behinds of her eyes and her surroundings that were drenched in sick regality. She felt claustrophobic, but her pores wanted to collapse in on themselves; she felt sick, but that contraction was somehow like a bandage that stopped the rise—kept it down, contained.

The last of the banister was almost rough under her skin—startlingly rough—and so she fell to her knees again. Bringing them up towards her chest and her feet away from the staircase, she fumbled in her pocket for the flashlight. She grabbed it, it slipped from her grip; she sweeped her hand around on the rug and caught it with her index and pinkie finger. Breathing hard, Joyce flicked the flashlight on and stuck the bulb over her open eye.

The sensation was, paradoxically, cool. The glass wasn’t quite touching the gel, but the light certainly was; it felt as if it was unwinding her eye, untying a knot. She took it away, seeing only a camel-beige over the right of her vision like a sideways cookies-and-cream, then shoved it over her left. _I want the full cream_ , she thought to herself—her first cautious thought since she ran from the thing of tourniquets. She shot cold air out her nose and smiled, closed her eyes, took the light away. Her legs relaxed, gave out, and she was lying on the rug, her chest ballooning up and down, her hands lying languidly about her stomach.

Downstairs, a monster carried another near-adult like a baby the long way, through the entrance hall. It shuffled past the spider chandelier and the busts, opened one of the parlour doors discretely with its elbow, and heaved itself inside.

Joyce couldn’t hear any of this. She was too busy with the cream-light that was undulating along her vision. She watched it curve up, down, like a child’s hand through cow’s milk. She linked her fingers over her knuckles. She could stay here forever, probably, following those undulations ( _udderlations?_ ) with her pupils: two little dot-sleds in a snowfield that—

 

*

 

The grandfather clock struck nine.

Joyce’s eyes snapped open and she jumped—literally jumped from her resting position on the rug to a sitting one. The clock chose to ignore its death throes and continued chiming: one—two—three—four. There was blood pumping fast in her heart now; there was that anxiety and rush she felt before, and with it, she pushed herself up off the ground and stood, with a slight uneasiness, on the long rug. She wavered her flashlight to the end of the corridor where the clock still sounded: six—seven—eight. She listened to it, not to determine the time, but to know when it stopped. When it did—nine—she stared at it for a few more seconds, her tongue massaging the back of her front row of teeth, then began recollecting her memory.

She scanned the corridor, noting its wideness, and yet, its linearity. While downstairs she felt like a kid in a candy store with that open hall, those last streams of light and the branched paths, here, she felt constrained—locked in. She would explore these rooms in order, and then she would reach the clock, try to peep out the sides of that window and remember how it looked from the outside, and leave.

But no, she remembered something. Her flashlight focused on a small mirror seated on a side-table close by, and a thought clicked into place. Minnie.

She took her first step from the dull red of the rug, then the second, and soon she was striding toward the object in the cone of her flashlight, remembering what Minnie said after she showed her her father.

‘He is here,’ she said, a voice in the candlelight. ‘In the house.’

She hesitated. ‘Really?’

‘Yes. If you wish to see him again, I can show you; but my power is stronger on the second floor.’

‘Where can I find you?’

‘Look for me in the mirrors.’

Joyce leaned over the side-table, one hand shining the light against the mirror’s surface, and the other clasped ‘round the top of her knee. The torch made glares in the reflection of her face, but revealed nothing more. She reached her fingers out and carefully dragged one across the mirror, feeling only the dull, not-quite smooth, silvery surface. There was none of the energy from before—none of the air current.

 She brought herself up again, brought one arm under the elbow of the other and flicked her teeth with her thumbnail. Was Minnie wrong? Maybe that mirror in the dark cobblestones and the candle-stalks was the only way to contact her. Joyce looked back to the staircase. The hallway looped squarely behind it with a wood-pole boundary, coming to the fore with another bust—this one seemingly of a white knight stood resolutely with its hands staking the hilt of its drawn sword—and two large paintings by its sides. She saw, as she walked up, the floorboards creaking in the otherwise silence, that there was a door on the right-hand side. Connecting the layout of downstairs to the layout of this floor, she twisted the doorknob, and pushed.

It was Minnie’s room, above the parlour. A faint reflection of moonlight from the half-curtained window to the south drifted about the space, merging with the light pinks of the bed and the toys, and the deep reds of the dresser, and the tables, and the frames. The wallpaper was dimples of stretched flower-petals, and the small paintings and drawings adorning it both childlike and contemplative. Next to a painting of an anthropomorphic goose reading stories to a goldilocked child was a small drawing of a boy sitting cross-legged on a bench, blushed cheeks giving way to streaming willow-leaves. There were dolls everywhere—hard ones, knitted ones—on the floor, on the small rocking chair, on the bed, and creeping out from underneath it.

There was a mirror on the dresser.

Joyce walked up to it, stepping carefully over the strewn toys. If she looked around, back to face the doorway, she would have seen the same view that she forgot she saw in the secret mirror downstairs. But, perhaps, there was still a faint memory, because instead of leaning over the dresser to check the reflection, she dragged back the chair, sat down in it awkwardly (she felt like a giant in a child’s playhouse), and shuffled it forward until her knees banged against the wood. She peered inside, seeing only black—peered closer. She saw a child’s face.

“Hello.”

Joyce jumped, her knees coming up further against the dresser and her eyes slamming shut. She went to say some expletive but forced herself to bite her lip, laugh out her nose, and take a breath. “Hello Minnie.”

“Hello.” She was leaning, smiling, folding dimples in her cheeks. Her arms formed a bow at her back. “This was my bedroom, if I can trust my own sight,” she said.

“It looks it. You’re a good artist, Minnie.”

“A strange place to reunite with your father,” she remarked, ignoring the compliment.

“I didn’t know there was any place else.”

“Any mirror would do,” she said. “Or any reflective surface, likely. I have yet to try.”

“The mirror in the hallway wouldn’t budge,” said Joyce.

Minnie’s eyelashes quirked. “Interesting. Perhaps we are meant to initiate someplace more significant.” She thought, for a moment, poking her cheek languidly. “It is tiring, playing games with him.”

“Who?” Joyce leaned closer. “Your father?”

Minnie gazed at her. “Yes. My father. Knowing him, as I do—we might try the Observatory next. Yes,” she nodded, “that appears right.”

Joyce’s eyes widened. “So that _is_ an observatory.”

“You are far too intrigued about this manor for your own good.”

The chair squeaked. “It’s the next room, right?”

“Yes,” she smiled. “Evidently. See you there, Joyce,” she said, and floated behind the mirror’s frame, out of sight.

Joyce, grinning from ear to ear, shuffled back in the chair and tore off. Under her feet came the crunch of porcelain doll, but out in the hallway, a squeak from the knob of the room next door that she pushed and hurried through. It was the observatory.

It felt grander than the physical space should have allowed. The room itself was adequately sized—likely just as wide as the billiards room—but the height of it, and the coolness of it, and the tall, curved windows that consumed most of the far wall made it as large as Brimmingstoke itself. Walking between the swirling sofas and up the short stone steps, a view of trees gave way, like a spread map, to the corners of east-side, to fields, to fences, dark dots of trees; the city, faraway, twinkling in the watery light of the moon. Deep, dark, navy clouds, rolling, roiling above like crystal: their chill leaked through a distant hole at the top right corner of a window pane.

Joyce, embracing the cold, skipped up and placed her hands on the glass—cool as a popsicle next to the reflection of Minnie by her side—and felt the world at her fingertips.

“A beautiful town, is it not?” asked Minnie.

Seeing Brimmingstoke like this made Joyce want to cry more than she wanted to convey its beauty. It had felt so long that she had been back here—truly _felt_ that she had been back here. But now, with it all before her—it was like a hug. She could look out at this town, its buildings and its landscape, and see not barriers but an environment; a human habitat to live within and traverse. The dry buildings weren’t walls. Those low hills didn’t drop off into empty, spaceless void. They rolled, and they came down again onto the plane, and plodded on. She could climb them, if she wanted. She could, if she tried.

“I remember—” began Minnie. She hesitated, then turned, and leaned against the glass. “I remember when Father would take me here at sunrise. I needed my sun, for my health. We would watch the streams of it flow over the bush like some ghostly flood.” She breathed sharply in, then deeply out, as if to replicate the feeling of the rushing light, and Joyce found herself breathing with her. “It was always so beautiful. But I was never allowed out.”

“How come, Minnie?”

“The bush, back then,” she informed, “was a dimension of fear rather than nature. There were children who breached its depths, slipped behind a trunk or a crag, and were forever lost to time. It was easy to lose oneself when you were so little.”

Joyce gazed at the back of her small bunch of flowing hair, tinted only by the green and navy blue of the horizon. She thought about asking more of her home life, of her family, of her father. She wanted to ask her about the small boy from the drawing in her room—but she thought of those leaf streams, and how small he was behind them; how distant; and decided otherwise. It would upset her, she thought, and she was the only link with her own father. So she decided to shift focus.

Minnie’s fingernails were tapping the glass to some slow folk song, sounding more like tap code than any kind of melody or rhythm.

“Do you think…” Joyce tested. Minnie stopped tapping.

“I want to get out,” she said.

“What?” A second passed, and she cocked her head. “Minnie?”

“I know…” she sighed, and dropped her head. “I know you came for your father, Joyce. I understand that this is your story, not mine.” Another second, and then a turn, and she faced Joyce with stern lips. “But I want out.” The frills of her dress were like pistons as they pulled to a stop.

“What—what do you mean?” asked Joyce. She took her hand from the glass.

“I want out, Joyce. I want you to pull me out so that all this can end.”

“Pull you _out_? Physically?” She tried to laugh. “Aren’t you a…”

“You’re too far in to be asking questions like this, surely.”

Joyce looked on blankly.

“Do you truly not understand?” the girl said caustically. “We aren’t abiding by the standard rules of reality, here, Joyce.”

She shook her head. “I don’t—”

“Reach in. Grab my hand,” she offered it, “and pull me out before he sees us.”

“ _Who_?”

“My father.”

“But you had control over him,” she argues. “You sent him away.”

“ _Joyce_ ,” Minnie seethed. “We do _not_ have time for your stupid speculations.”

Joyce palmed her hands. “Minnie, I—”

“Reach—” she banged her fist “— _in_ —” against the pane. It shuddered, and the hills tilted slightly. “I’m vulnerable here.”

Joyce stepped back, raising her arms to her torso. The cold was biting through her jacket.

“How?” Minnie cried. Her face was incredulous, offended. “How can you be so selfish? I _helped_ you.” She shook her head. “You’re just like him,” she said after a moment. “You’re just like him,” she deflated.

“I—I don’t know what—”

“Your friend is still downstairs, you know. I wonder what he’s doing to him—hm?—that’s a thought.” She smirked. It was a bloody, wolfish affair. “What’s his name?”

Jerry, she thought with alarm. Joyce tensed, mouth parting.

“Jerry, is it? Jerry Miller? Jerry Miles? One of the two,” she mused, eyes glaring.

Joyce exclaimed, stepped back. Her foot dangled over the space above the step, and she set it down again.

Minnie was grinning now. “You’re not even going to help him? You’re meant to be a slave to your emotions, Joyce. That’s why you came here.”

Joyce turned, turned to face the exit.

 “ _Joyce_!”

And froze.

She stood there for a few seconds on quivering legs—then dropped to the floor.

“ _Joyce_!”

“Oh my god,” she muttered. “Oh my god. Oh my god, oh my god.”

“ _Joyce_!” The same intonation, each time.

She breathed—tried to—taking sharp intake in and giving something softer, but more unreliable, more harrowed, out. “Oh my _fucking_ god.” She plunged her wrists into her eyes, trying to find the snowfield.

“ _Joyce_!”

“Shut _up!_ ” she screamed. The words were ravaged, clipped.

“ _Joyce! It’s me_!”

“I know it’s not. Minnie, _please_.”

“ _Come over here, my little graveyard ghoul._ ”

“Why are you _tempting_ me?” She pulled her hands away from her eyes—the beige faded away into the dim. Joyce pulled herself up, stumbled to face the window again. “What are you?”

She saw the landscape first—the green plane, the town, the crystal sky—and then she saw the hand. His hand, again. But it had broken through the glass. It was reaching, stretching out for her, but mostly unmoving. It was stuck, still contained by the pane just before the wrist.

Joyce heard a sigh, and a chuckle. “ _Hi_ _Joyce_.” The hand gave a little wave. “ _It’s your father._ ”

She shook her head, sniffed. “No. No it’s not.”

The hand sagged. “ _Oh, come on. Come on, Joyce. Don’t play with me like this_.”

“Tell me _what_ you are.”

“ _I’m your_ father, _Joyce! Your father!_ ” he said. The hand gesticulated, withdrew its fingers, and then lowered again as if pensive. He sighed. “ _I’m so sorry I left you, Joyce. I was ill. I didn’t know what I was doing._ ”

Her breathing was ragged and laden with mucus. Her hands clutched the forearms opposite to ward off the current of cold air flowing outwards from the glass. It was like the flow from an air conditioner—a giant, overfed air conditioner with a slit for a mouth and grating for eyes.

It was like there was no glass there at all. Just the evening’s leafy kiss.

“No,” Joyce whispered.

“ _I leave the house in a cloud of grey smoke_ ,” her father said.“ _I crash my car through the front gates of this estate, and I climb out as my eyes burn from the light of the blue moon._ ”

“Stop!” she cried. “Minnie!”

“ _It’s dim out, and the wind is pushing me here, dragging me here, the shape of rain in my ears like the howls of werewolves hunting for their fill. I stumble through the vestibule doors and collapse in the hall as I claw at my eyes and tell the demon to go away._ ”

“Please.”

“ _The house is a lightning rod._ ”

Joyce felt tears spring from her eyes and lowered, stutteringly, her arms to her sides.

“ _It shakes as thunder rails against my pores, as the chandelier breaks from its shackle and gouges a hole into my stomach. I died there but I thought of you, Joyce. I thought of you I’ve missed you so much Joyce I thought of you as I died. So now I haunt this house for you Joyce. I haunt this house for you._ ”

“Dad…”

“ _So pull me in, my little living dummy_ ,” he said, splaying his hand.“ _We can watch the sunrise._ ”

She grimaced, stumbled forward—slowly, at first, then quickly—step by heavy step up to the window. She reached out, grabbed the hand with both of her own. She could feel the pores, and the sweat, and the joints—and her hand slipped away. She reached again, pulling, pulling, pulling the sweat, pulling the pores, pulling the joints pulling the skin off the flesh and it slipped away. His skin: it slipped away and dropped to the floor like a rubber glove.

“ _No_ —no!”

Joyce cried, stepped back. It lay there on the stone, lackadaisical, unmoving, as the hand reaching out of the mirror twitched and pried. It was a mannequin’s hand now: plastic, white, shiny and pearl.

“There we go,” said a breath at the back of her neck.

She was pulled into a hug from behind, and in the reflection of the glass window she saw a ratty, trailing beard and a hook curling ‘round her throat.

She closed her eyes, and took a breath.


	14. 9

## 9

It crashed, did it not?

The ship. Our ship. It crashed into the side of the mountain, shooting flurries of wood splinters and water droplets up, up high—up onto the bluff. The cascading waves glittered in the light of the green sun as the fragments grew legs, grew feet, grew torso and head, grew body and mind in the form of a structure of wood and cordovan. A manor. Our manor.

A manor has history, doesn’t it?

We’ve always been here.

Joyce awoke to a dripping on her forehead. She couldn’t hear the droplets yet—there wasn’t any sound, yet—but she could feel them striking her left temple in steady, rhythmic strokes.

_Drip! Drip! Drip! Drip!_

A creaking from below, from above—distantly, from the sides. The creaking of the ship’s hull as it wavered on the sea-waves.

A droplet entering her gaping mouth.

She pulled up, retched, dragged her fingers across the boards and up to her lips, parted them slightly—coughed, once. Her eyes squinted tighter, then loosened again, and opened.

The hull looked more like an expansive, shakily-lit attic, to Joyce, than a ship interior. It widened about her, stretched out to the size of two long garden sheds connected by their sides. There were wood beams like vertical rafters placed in columns and in rows that bounced the sunlight from the slits between the planks. They caught the sine wave patterns that drifted up from the floorboards, threw them about the space, about the hanging tarps and barrels, coils of rope and crates, then gave them shadows and depth. It disoriented Joyce, as she pushed herself to her feet. One moment the floor beneath her was riding a sunlight-glittered wave, and the next, it was plunged into darkness, and she was left to wonder whether she was really standing on anything at all—whether her next step would lead to tilting ground, or her descent into a void of pitch and water.

There was a ladder in the centre of the hull, spotlit by a consistent, cylindrical beam of sunlight that flowed from above. The light appeared murkier in texture the more Joyce approached it, as if it was paired with a smoke machine as part of some stage show. She brushed her damp hair away and felt the light with the tip of her finger. It was cold, and almost seemed to give resistance before the murk diffused into smaller, independent chunks.

Joyce heard a sound like three echoed coughs, phlegm-tinged, rough, from somewhere in the hull. She turned, slightly startled but mostly curious, and her eyes focused in turn on the hanging tarps, barrels, coils of rope and crates sporadically illuminated by the light—but found nothing. So she faced the ladder, again, and began climbing.

_Grip! Step. Grip! Step. Grip! Step. Grip! Step._

The light was even murkier now that she was inside it. The smoke—it smelled like smoke, to her—curled around her cheeks and her earlobes, danced in front of her eyes and slipped into her nostrils. It was, she could have sworn, more difficult to move inside of it, not because it gave resistance, as she thought before, but because it seemed almost receptive to her touch. More than receptive, even.

_Grip! Step. Grip! Step. Grip! Step. Grip! Step._

She thought, as she climbed. Thought of Brimmingstoke: she would be a part of it, again. Thought of her father: she would see him, again. Thought of someone else, too. Tried to. He was more of a fizzed-out neural link in her mind now than he was a friend.

_Grip! Step. Grip! Step._

Joyce went to grab the next rung, but her hand met dead air. She had reached the top, it seemed. With a heave of her upper body and a scramble of her legs she made it onto solid boards. She began to stand, and a gale suddenly exploded through the murk and threatened to knock her off balance. It beat loudly against her pores, whipped her hair about her face like it was a small whirlwind—her hands splayed and met the wood—then, after a moment, it stabilised to a softer, more manageable wind, and she could stand upright.

Gulls calling. Through the murk, through the smoke, she could smell the seasalt: it drifted in the air like nasal flower petals, danced about in specks of white and red and settled on the strands of her fringe with the smallest of chimes, the smallest of smirks. There was a crashing sound—she stumbled as the boat tilted—and flecks of wavewater spattered down in a puddle around her, wetting her jeans, and her shoes, and the top edges of her jacket. It wasn’t cold—it felt more like the jet of a warm spa bath, if our reader can imagine it.

A greater wave further off: billowing, navy green, silhouetted in the murk like a cut-out made of rarefied neon. It made trails in the air—fluorescent blue trails—which Joyce soon realised was the sky itself breaking through. The murk didn’t rush to fill the negative space; instead, the wave came crashing down the full width of the ship, and Joyce was provided a window of sight as the murk cleared away. She was stood precariously on the stern behind the six-spoked wheel, and before her was laid a deck now rinsed and grimed with water and froth, with two masts reaching up, up, up into the green, tilting from the force of the water. Lattice ropes swung down from these heights and hooked into the port and starboard, stretched resolutely against the wind, constructing a loose tunnel that invited Joyce to walk down among the barrels and the grating and the tarps.

She did so.

The soles of her shoes waded through stray murk not quite swept away by the wave as she descended the wood steps. They groaned under her feet and she gripped the flaky banister for balance, then, hearing a roar, she gripped it harder. There was no navy green indicator of its arrival, but a wave rocked the boat nonetheless; down its length, from the front—it jolted her from her standing position and made her slip down a step, the wood jutting forcefully into her calves. The sound of a bucket spilling its contents from on top of a door on top of a high cliff reaching up to the stars—with it, Joyce regained her balance and stumbled out onto the deck.

Wavewater rinsed between the floorboards, down, apparently, into the hull that Joyce woke up in. She frowned and realised, in a brief flash of wit, that the hull was far too big and far too wide to form the interior to this ship’s exterior, that its placement meant that it was centred around the stern rather than the main deck. Another flash reminded her that she was on a ship in the middle of the ocean, and somehow the former didn’t seem as extraordinary.

She looked about herself, through the negative space, saw clumps of tentacular seaweed and the brief flashes of sail from the foremast as more water sprayed from above—then she noticed the steps leading up to the bow, back into the murk, and climbed up.

It was only green and smoke and salt-specks at first, but after taking her first few steps forward, she saw it. A gap, like the one in her dream. Like the negative space afforded by the water hitting the deck, but different. This was rectangular— _cleanly_ rectangular, as if laser-cut—floating in the air, somewhat low to the ground, and still, despite the rocking of the ship. Looking through, as she did, as she stepped closer and leaned down, she could see through it like it was a window—like a static, floating window—or a portal—or a tear in reality. Something. She could see the sky. She could see through into the tip of a bow without green or smoke or salt-specks of white and red. And she could see us. The pirate. The unkempt sailor.

We stood there, gazing out onto the horizon, stroking our beard with the tip of our hook and pretending not to notice her presence.  

‘Come closer, Joyce,’ we had told her. ‘Push your head through, there’s a good girl. That’s right.’

She hesitated slightly less, now, than she did then. Only half a second—time spent examining the gap from different angles and rubbing her tongue along the backs of her front teeth as she so often does—but still: an improvement. She would only improve.

Eventually, she did as we asked. She kneeled down, steadied herself against the tilting of the ship, and then, angling her head forwards nose down, neck up—the gap wasn’t quite big enough—she stuck her head through. The back of her hair touched the edge of the gap and she felt ornate, curved wood (perhaps an antique frame), and with a shallow inhalation she gripped both edges and moved her mouth to speak.

“What a day it is,” we said, our words facing the waves. They bounced off the joinless weld between sea and sky and back again. “What a day, I say.” We gestured, out at the ocean, with our hook. “Look at this view and tell me it isn’t beautiful, hm? The water, shimmering with the light of the green sun. The waves, turned by the moontide, sometimes roiling, othertimes calming, cradling. A mother’s embrace.” We sighed, chest and stomach unmoving. “She. There is life, in her arms. Coral reefs, plankton, kelp, clams, anemone—come on, picture them. That’s it. Octopi, creatures of sponge or teeth or spines, dolphins—” we twisted our hook up into the air “—rising up, bursting, out of the surface of the water, casting splash-trails of glittering droplets that ripple in the sunlight—” let it fall “—then diving back down, down into the marine. Majesty.”

Eight seconds passed between us—less than a moment, but for her, perhaps it felt an hour. She was still gripping the edges of the frame, her neck holding her head awkwardly between the edges. There was sweat on her brow despite the calm breeze, and she was biting into her lower lip. She was still gripping onto something through our echoed words, but it was a struggle, and it was clear that she was failing. We could tell that those seconds passed between _us_ , after all.

“You would agree, Joyce?” we questioned.

She groaned and gripped harder. “Yeah.” She tried to nudge her neck upward but found that the frame-edge was constricting her movement.

We smiled beneath our beard. “Good. I was beginning to think you forgot how to talk.” We turned around on our pegleg, the chains looped from our coat pockets and lowered to our knees rattling. She couldn’t see up to our face. “Shall we begin?”

She moaned. The frame dug, conformed, into her neck, and she clawed at the approaching edges. Her head drooped.

“Again, don’t mind it,” we said. “It will finish momentarily. This is an important stage of the process.”

We let less than a moment pass as the frame dug deeper, approaching closer and closer (like a camera aperture) a point of no return, where the points of the wood would dig close enough to cut. Her vision began blurring, the boards beneath and in front of her fading into a weathered mess of grey-brown plank and fuzz-black slit. It felt, to her, as if she had hung herself, but changed her mind at the last second.

The frame released as if spring-loaded.

Joyce gasped for breath and her chin hit the bottom edge of the frame as her hands lost their grip. She bit her tongue. We felt a trickle of blood pool in her mouth and raised an eyebrow, licked our lips in commiseration. Pivoting on our pegleg, we turned around to face the ocean again as Joyce held onto the frame and angled her head upwards, and forwards, to face our back. To her, we were only a silhouette: a tall, dark force on the bright horizon.

We tucked our hand and our hook behind our tailbone. “The last we met,” we said, “it was in your dream. Is that correct?”

She nodded, wiping tears off her face with a hand, then mumbled, “Yes.”

“We have only met in one dream.” A small pause, as her gaze refocused. “Yes?”

“Yes, yes.”

“Good,” we said. “On occasion, I have been witnessed by my clients again before consultation proper. My entry into the subconscious mind can have hallucinatory effects extending into that of the conscious—you see? It is likely, however, that said clients suffer from certain mental anomalies—disorders—illnesses. They make difficult subjects, as you might imagine.” We paused. “The fact that you haven’t witnessed me since our first encounter suggests a stable mental capacity. This should be a very successful session indeed.”

The ship creaked, tilted slightly on a rolling wave; an uneasy noise. We frowned.

“You hesitate,” we said. Our palm gripped harder the wrist of our hook-hand. “You _have_ seen me?”

“I don’t know,” she said, her voice growing abnormally steady. “I saw a girl—Minnie. I don’t know if you—”

“Minnie Rose Morris.”

“Yeah.”

A wave lapped at the edge of the bow, spraying salty specks of lime up onto the coaming. “I am not Minnie Rose Morris,” we said, closing my eyes. “You can tell that just by looking at me, can you not?”

There were four coughs—phlegm-tinged and rough—from somewhere out on the ocean. They echoed, echoed, echoed across the waves like skipping rocks, hit the horizon, then shot back, back. They hit us, but we didn’t flinch.

We said, “Tell me,” crossing our arms. “Tell me what you saw.”

Joyce adjusted her grip on the frame, took a parted breath, and slid her eyes from the top edge to the right corner of her lids.

She _rolled_ them.

“I saw Minnie,” she said. “In the mirror underneath the observatory, then the one in her room, then the window in the observatory upstairs.”

We nodded with a relaxed sigh, understanding. “And you thought this was me.”

“Wasn’t it?” she asked abruptly. It came out harsh, and—shockingly—almost accusatory. “Ghosts aren’t real,” she continued. “Not _here_ , anyway; I’m not stupid. The kid I saw in that mirror was a good imitation of one for a while, but she broke. It was clear she wasn’t herself—that it was you pulling the strings.”

“I was not,” we said simply. We smirked at her imaginations.

“Bullshit.” We chuckled. “You were tempting me to let you in, using Minnie and my father as bait.”

“There is something—”

“You,” she interrupted, her eyes reflective of the bright blue sky overhead—she interrupted—our hook digging into the side of our red jacket—piercing—wanting blood, “manipulated me into thinking I could see him again. Not just his memory, but the _real_ —”

“Stop talking.”

The waves stopped. They stopped dead, because we told them to. We narrowed the aperture and heard her cry out, felt her neck lunge to the bottom of the frame and her head snap down to face the wood. We stood at the edge of her eyeline, arms at our sides, our hand splayed and our hook twisting in its socket.

“There are some things you need to know, Joyce,” we said, curling our voice like little wisps of smoke into her ears. “It seems you continue to carry some misconceptions.” We grabbed the back of her hair and yanked her neck. It dug further into the frame; she cried out again. “One. You do not interrupt me. A simple request, and one that I thought you would have internalised by now. _I_ control the conversation. Hm? Do you agree?”

She tried to nod but seethed as pain shot up through the tendons of her neck.

We got the picture.

“Two,” we continued. “I do not manipulate. I do not _tempt_. My program is based on honesty and acceptance. You come to me—” we touched our hook to our heart “—because you want to experience something that feels real. Something you hope for; something you dream. You want to experience it and you want to take it with you not just as a souvenir, but as a continuous, lasting reality that you can live in, and laugh with, and accept. You understand this.” We released her hair, slowly—gently—and felt her feel herself shudder as our bony digits streaked through the strands and left them ragged, wild. “Do you think this program would be successful if I misled you? If I ‘tempted’ my clients, as you say? You should understand that everything I show you or have showed you through this process is something that you want—something that you need. There is no malice here. There is no deception. Minnie’s actions…” We sighed. “I do not steer them. Her presence is limited—controlled—but, unfortunately, lies strategically outside of my peripheries. She will not be a problem for much longer.

“And three.” With the silent whispering of my coat, we placed the nail of our index finger beneath her chin, and raised it. It drew blood that trickled down into the web and pooled over our knuckles. She could see the full of our beard, and our lips, if she wanted to—but she had closed her eyes. “This is a very, very good day, Joyce. An important one, culminating in the fulfillment of a cosmic destiny far beyond your understanding. You—” and him “—are very important in the completion of what will happen today. Because _you_ are important, Joyce. _You_ are important. I will not have you forget that.”

We bent down, brushed her fringe away with our hook, and kissed her on the forehead. Our lips left a mark like a pinch would to a child’s cheek, but they felt skeletal on her skin. They left goose bumps.

We frowned, stepped back, letting the blood drip from her chin to the boards below as a saltless, airless, frictionless breeze flowed between us.

We wondered of its significance, and released the aperture.


	15. V

## V

Nothing.

Nothing.

Nothing but blue light at the end of the corridor, flowing cleanly through the circle-window like a cylindrical beam. Its trajectory is straight, balanced, and unrelenting in its intensity as it floats along the shifting rug, illuminating at its destination the confused face of a near-adult.

Jerry squints, shields his eyes, moves out of the glare and onto the boards. He looks down at his phone, down at the light artificial, and having barely gained a sense of his surroundings he begins hesitantly tapping out a response to Joyce’s message.

  


| Yo, Jer.  
I've been meaning to ask. What's up with your profile pic? | 11:47PM  
---|---|---  
  
 

With a quivering thumb, he sends it.

 

| Joyce? What the fuck is going on? Where are you? Why didn't you answer my call? | 11:48PM  
---|---|---  
  
 

He continues to stare down at the phone for a moment, his face contorted into a subtle, wide-eyed frown in the screenlight. A second passes. Two. Three. With each, his breathing gets shallower, more rattled. So many questions. He watches for her response, watches for the little pencil that’d clue him on to an incoming reply. He doesn’t get it, not yet. He’s almost tempted by force of habit to lock his phone and slip it back into his pocket—but he stops himself. Instead, he grips it in his left hand, flicks off the flashlight with his left, and tries to get a grasp on his surroundings.

It’s a corridor, he reaffirms. Comforting to get confirmation. The moon is shining true through the far window, fully bright, fully full—one huge sliver stretched into a sphere. There’s not a point of the window that isn’t pierced by its glare, he realises. It doesn’t even look like there’s an outside.

There’s a tick-tock sound like the ticking of a time bomb, but he can’t see a clock anywhere.

The bluebeam draws his focus. It’s translucent, approaching opaque, now spotlighting the bust behind the stairwell. It’s slanting, though, slanting down, creeping toward the head of the stairs.

A ding. A message.

Jerry shoots his gaze down again, and as he’s reading, moves to the right of the corridor. He goes to lean on a doorframe—then he thinks better of it, and hunches slightly with his right hand tucked under his left arm.

 

| Whoa, what? Did something happen? | 11:49PM  
---|---|---  
  
 

Something akin to a breathy moan escapes from Jerry’s throat. He closes his eyes. Squints them, rubs them down—pinches the bridge between like he’s trying to flatten an obnoxious smiling stress ball. He empties most of the air out his lungs, mutters a ‘ _what_?’ with the rest, then shoots back a reply.

 

| Joyce. This isn't funny | 11:50PM  
---|---|---  
  
 

Footsteps. Shuffling ones. Close. Close. Far.

He doesn’t hear them. She’s typing another message already.

 

| Okay, hang on, slow down. What are you freaking out about? Did I forget something we had planned tonight?  
I haven't got any calls from you by the way. I didn't think anyone under the age of 30 still called other people in the 21st century. | 11:50PM  
---|---|---  
  
 

_Making jokes? Is she for real?_

He glances about himself again, thinking he heard something, then shifts his balance to his right heel and continues messaging.

 

| Are you okay? Where are you right now? | 11:50PM  
---|---|---  
  
 

| Again, what? | 11:50PM  
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Creaking.

 

| Just tell me | 11:51PM  
---|---|---  
  
 

The creaking of the stairwell.

Jerry snaps his head toward the landing, toward the bluebeam slowly slanting down its length. He hears shuffling steps from the bottom, from the gloom, and backs away, fumbling with the doorknob.

 

| I'm fine. Totally fine. Just chilling in bed, listening to music. | 11:51PM  
---|---|---  
  
 

He twists it open—it turns without a sound—turns, and pushes through. The light of the bluebeam illuminates the room’s contents, but only somewhat—he can make out something reflective in the far corner and a soft carpet underneath that might only appear bluish because of the light.

He closes the door with care, twisting the knob so that the bolt doesn’t catch on the frame. There’s a soft rush of air as it shuts, but not much else.

He stands there, holding the knob, taking shallow breaths. His head perks down, angles slightly, listens to the sounds beyond the door.

Breathe in. Breathe out.

Muffled, creaking footsteps. One—two, three. One, two—three. They’re unnatural: sometimes limping, sometimes consistent. One, two, three—four.

The sound of stretching leather.

Jerry focuses on the screenlight phone again—a welcome respite in the otherwise darkness. He’s tempted to use the light to see what surrounds him in the dark, maybe see what was reflecting earlier when he opened the door. One side of him wants this, but another, more prominent side wants to curl away from the rest of the room and pretend that there’s nothing there, that nothing _could_ be there, lurking.

It wins.

He sits down on the carpet, his back held firmly against the door and his knees raised up to his cheekbones. He flinches at the keystroke sound as he begins tapping out his response—it almost seems to echo inside his head—then quickly mutes the phone.

 

| At home | 11:51PM  
---|---|---  
  
 

More footsteps. One, two, three—four—five. One, two—three—four—five. They don’t seem to be getting closer, but neither do they seem to be getting farther away.

He’s already typing out another message when Joyce sends the next one.

 

| Yeah. Again, is that an issue? Am I meant to be out somewhere with you right now? I don't remember that we had anything going. | 11:52PM  
---|---|---  
  
 

‘ _Christ_ ,’ he mutters, biting his lip. ‘ _Fucking_ …’

 

| Joyce, this is scary. I'm really fucking scared right now, so if you're pulling one over my eyes because you're pissed, this has gone too far | 11:52PM  
---|---|---  
  
 

One, two, three, four, five—six. One, two…

 

| Dude, are you okay? What happened? Are you in danger? | 11:52PM  
---|---|---  
| I don't know | 11:52PM  
  
 

Voices. Voices faraway. Not whispers, but hushed—quelled. Beyond the door.

Breathe in. Breathe out.

 

| Can I call? Are you trying to be quiet? | 11:52PM  
---|---|---  
| Won't get anything | 11:53PM  
| You won't get the call?  | 11:53PM  
| No | 11:53PM  
  
 

…four, five—six, seven—eight—nine. They’re not just footsteps now. Behind them, back with the voices faraway, are chimes, one for each step. Beyond the door.

They’re getting louder.

 

| Where are you? I'll call 000, just tell me what you need. | 11:53PM  
---|---|---  
| No point | 11:53PM  
  
 

Nine—nine—nine—nine…

A voice, louder with the chimes. It’s a deep voice, calling a name.

 

| What? | 11:53PM  
---|---|---  
| There's no point. I don't think they even know this place exists | 11:53PM  
  
 

 _‘Miss Morris,’_ it says. But there’s another name beneath it.

…nine—eight…

Breathe. Breathe.

 

| Jerry, you're clearly anxious right now, even if they don't know it exists they can find it. | 11:52PM  
---|---|---  
  
 

…seven—six—five…

 _‘Miss Morris,’_ it says. _Jerry_.

 

| They can't do anything anyway I don't know what's going on here but it's not safe | 11:52PM  
---|---|---  
  
 

 _‘Miss Morris.’_ _Jerry, honey, come out, would you?_

… _four—three_ …

The footchimes are creaking. They’re outside the door.

 

| Jerry just tell me where you are, or what I can do. Anything. | 11:51PM  
---|---|---  
| I don't even know if you're real, Joyce I'm sorry | 11:51PM  
  
 

 _Three—three—three_.

 

| Pretty sure my profile pic back then was glitch art of a bird by some Italian guy, I don’t remember | 11:50PM  
---|---|---  
| Bye | 11:49PM  
  
 

Three knocks at the door. Jerry jumps, scrambles away.

There’s a deep voice. It clears its throat before it speaks. ‘Miss Morris? May I come in?’

Jerry hears a huff, half-muffled from beyond the door and half-clear from within the same room. There’s the sound of feet sliding into slippers, and the sound of padding ones as a silhouette,—half-pirouette and half-alive,—makes its way across the carpet. He gasps, backs away further, his fingers digging into the fibres as the door is opened a quarter way to a corridor of orange-blue.

‘Yes? What is it?’ the figure retorts. It’s a woman with bunned hair in an elaborate nightgown. She clutches her hip with one hand and the door with her other, seemingly ready to slam it on her visitor’s face in a moment’s notice.

The deep voice speaks again. Its figure is hidden by the wood.

‘My apologies for disturbing you from your slumber. I—’

‘I wasn’t _slumbering_ ,’ she corrects sardonically.

A moment’s pause. ‘Very well. My apologies. I came by with the wash, as you can—’

‘The bagwash.’

‘No, no—’

‘These aren’t pressed,’ she continues, poking at something beyond the door. ‘There are crinkles in this dress, Arthur.’ She looks up at her visitor’s face and sighs through her nose. ‘What else can I expect, though,—hm? Nothing much else. I suppose I needn’t give you much issue over it. It isn’t your fault.’ She takes a step behind,—Jerry twists back, his face frozen in blank, confused terror,—and her hand slips from the door. ‘Come in, besides. Put them away. I suppose there won’t be many outside this house who will see me dressed, if this heat is any indication.’

The door slides open, and in floods light. Flickers of blue, orange, and where the two meet, grey. A shadow cast by a figure of dark tourniquets overlayed on top a broad-shouldered near-adult in reach-me-downs, balancing a neatly folded stack of laundry that rests from his stomach to the edge of a cheekbone.

‘Jerry,’ says the tourniquets as the near-adult walks precariously into the room. It’s a deep, clear, comforting voice. ‘Come out now.’

Jerry isn’t lucid enough to move, speak, or react. But he can see of his own accord. His eyes: they aren’t being stretched from their sockets. He can see, in the orange-blue light, that _its_ eyes, those cold, rolling marbles: they’re blindfolded.


	16. 10

## 10

“Ahhh. Finally.”

Joyce’s father sank into the couch cushion with a beer in one hand and a rental movie in the other. With a languid flick of his wrist, he tossed the DVD case onto the side table where it landed, slid, and tumbled off the side with a scribbled notepad and an untorn envelope. He crossed one leg over the other and looked across to his daughter.

He smiled, his shadowed cheeks making creases up to his eyes. “You comfy?”

Joyce smirked back, her teeth buttered with popcorn. “Yeah. You shouldn’t be though.”

He took a sip of his beer, frowned. “What? Why?”

“You didn’t put the movie in, dumbass.”

“Wha—” He spun ‘round and planted both feet on the carpet, his bottle making little splashing sounds with the motion. With three stuttered movements, he leaned over the arm of the couch, over the side table, through the crack between it and the discoloured wall. “Ah, Christ.”

Joyce put some popcorn into her mouth and watched him struggle to fit his arm through the gap.

“If only there was a kind—” he grunted “— _helpful_ child around to do menial labour for the old man.”

“Not a child,” she said through a mouthful of popcorn.

“Teen, then. No—”

“No.”

“Near- _adult_ , that’s right. You just love to emphasise the adult part, don’t you?” He squeezed his arm in further, the table now tipped against the side of the couch and coming up to his elbow. “Y’know, being an _adult_ usually means you have these things called a _job_ , and a _house_ , and a set of _responsibilities_.”

“Yeah. Hence: _near_ -adult.”

“Right.”

“So I don’t have to care about that stuff yet.”

“So you don’t have to care about anything, yeah?” He pulled the case out and the table fell back against the carpet with a dull boom. “Not even the old man?” he pouted, placing the beer bottle on the table.

“Especially not you, _old man_.” She opened her jaw wide and shoved a palmful of popcorn into her mouth with a violent expression.

“You’ll eat it all before I even get a bite in.”

“Good.”

“Oof.” He moved over to the TV, knelt down, and pushed a finger against the eject button of the PS3. The console beeped. “You’re mean tonight.”

There was a soft whirr (the sound of the HDD platter spinning) and then a few small clicks like a one-rodent band playing the snare (the sound of the HDD head searching for the orientation sensor). After a few moments, a disc slid out the drive and was hooked by the finger of Joyce’s father, who held it up to the screenlight as the PS3 orchestrated to life out of the no-input blue. Joyce tilted her head slightly at the sight of the side of his face illuminated by the translucent, glittery waves of the start-up animation.

“You been trying to finish this before I put it in pawn?” He placed it reflective side down on the TV stand.

“Can’t really finish it, but yeah, I’ve been playing it. Trying to take down the Dark Brotherhood while giving safety and care to my loving wife who cooks food for me.”

He tsked and shook his head as he slid in the DVD. “I don’t understand why you play such a lemon in these fantasy games.” The rubber clicks of an analog stick. “Every time I walk in here you’re courting some elf broad. Or that blue girl.”

“I hate that blue girl.”

Joyce’s father was concentrated on navigating the menu, so his answer came out a bit absently. “Ah, yeah.”

Joyce bit into some popcorn. “She mindfucked me to death. Actually.” He laughed, standing up. “Just straight up murdered me with blue sex energy.”

“That’s some kinda femme fatale.”

“You’re telling me.”

“Y’know,” he said, walking back over to the couch, “I read a novel like that once.”

“I thought you read, like, history books, not sci-fi.”

He took a swig from his bottle and settled down again with it in his hand. “No, you’re right, you’re right. I’m speaking in terms of, y’know, buggering someone to death.”

“Right.”

He splayed a hand. “Someone introduced this novel to me. Looked like a sentimental kissfest from the cover—so y’know, I’m pushing it away. Like I’ll be caught reading this kind of poofta crap, y’know?” The hand switched to something more defensive. “Of course, I’m a kid at the time. I value romance now, and I get that it doesn’t make me a poof for reading it.”

Joyce stifled a smirk.

“Anyway, but they tell me it has some historical bits in it. Meant to be set during the Mexican Revolution. Later I find out they’re shitting me and it barely even goes into detail with that, but whatever. I don’t know it, and I keep reading through it, and it’s almost interesting, really.” His dangling foot made semi-circles in the air. “The entire thing is told in month-by-month recipes, and they’re all bat-crazy Latin rolls, and, giant cakes, and, and, stuffed turkeys—and so on.” He swallows. “Stuff I couldn’t make, y’know.” A little loading icon animated a ticking clock at the upper-right corner of the otherwise darkened screen. “Your mum d-doesn’t even know how to work the stove, so she wouldn’t know where to start. You couldn’t do anything for it. I don’t think even Sal down at catering could fix some of that stuff up.”

“Yeah, who else couldn’t make it, Dad?”

“P-Probably Calvin down at the pub couldn’t work it out, yeah.”

“I don’t suppose the neighbour’s dog could go all James Oliver in the kitchen and whip up something like that.” She looked over at him. Stared for a few moments. Frowned.

“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah. Yeah, yeah.” His eyes were closed against the darkness, his breathing tough, laboured. Anxious. There were little splashing sounds.

The Warner Home Video theme began playing its spiralling piano, illuminating his shaking hands, his shaking foot, his shaking jaw. She reached out to him against the light.

“Dad—”

He jumped away, the condensation on the bottle making it slip from his fingers. “Don’t—”

 

*

 

 _“And now for the main course: you! Feast… on…_ this _!”_

Joyce had her socked feet curled up onto the couch and a stray hand laid idly in the popcorn bowl. Her fingers curled, taking hold of a few seeds, then placed one carefully into her mouth.

“You used to hate this scene when you were younger,” her father said. He was sitting with his legs spread now, an unopened bottle resting between his knees. His thumb flicked the sides of the cap, dragged a weathered nail against its ridges.

Joyce found herself unable to look from the television screen. “It still creeps me out a bit. I think it’s, like, how artificial it all is. It’s all so autonomous and contrived that it feels kind of… wrong.”

_“Ahahahahaha! Hee hee hee hee hee!”_

Her mouth curled into a half-smile. “God—even the stupid laughter is weird, somehow.”

Her father rummaged around in the bowl, found nothing substantial, then went back to tapping his bottlecap. He stammered, then spoke. “How much of that do you think’s from when you watched this as a kid compared to your actual feelings about it now?”

“Man, I dunno. You could ask that about anything.” With a struggle, Joyce reached for her phone. Our response was almost immediate, and with it, she felt herself able to move her eyes from the TV’s screen to the one in her hands.

 

Is something the matter?  
---  
  
 

_“Jinkies. They’re moving toward us. Run!”_

Joyce felt down the side of the phone’s plastic casing with her right thumb, considering her reply. She tapped the first few letters of something curt—then erased it and started again, thinking better of it.

 

Please don't skip anything.  
---  
  
 

Barely half a second passed by between her submission of the message and our response.

 

My apologies, Miss Pearson. I detected an increase in your heart-rate and shifted to a point later in the scene that appeared less stressful for you.  
---  
  
  


_“We’re trapped!”_

_“Quick! Try the bookcase!”_

_“What!?”_

_“One of these has_ got _to open a secret passageway!”_

_“Velma, this is a ride!”_

_“You got a better plan, Fred?”_

Joyce found her mouth moving against her own volition. “How _does_ she know that?”

“It’s her job,” her father said. “Velma knows the game.”

“No, but, I agree with Fred here. It’s a ride. This isn’t _actually_ a haunted castle—people can’t get just off the car and start flinging books off the walls.”

It was difficult, saying one thing out loud while preparing mentally to type something else. While she didn’t have to consciously think about what she was saying to her father, there was something residual, something subconscious, that disconnected her more present thoughts. It flowed into her fingers at points, became the beginnings of misplaced words, almost penning a statement that was one-half deliberate thought and other-half accidental suspicion regarding Velma’s investigative ability in a 2002 live-action remake with 2002 CGI.

She managed, anyway, but the sentiment of the statement was somewhat lost in the process.

 

I didn’t think you’d show me this one first.  
---  
It was the earliest scene available to me, and your refusal to partake in further consultation gave me little direction as to which you would want surfaced first.  
  
 

_“Rwha—rwha—rwha do we do!?”_

_“Do what we_ do _best, Scoob. Eat. Auuuuggghhh—”_

“God. That thing looks like a goddamn chestburster.”

“You can tell that it’s a hand-puppet, can’t you?”

“I _know_ , right? You can _tell_ it’s a hand-puppet.”

He chuckled.

 

Can you go back?  
---  
Of course. It will be just one moment.  
  
 

_“Bleughf. It’s plastic!”_

_“What do you care you drink out of the_ toilet _!”_

“Here it comes.”

A pause, a drop in the music.

 _“So do_ y _—”_

 

*

  


“—fucking touch me,” he snapped.

It fell, bounced off his shin, and toppled onto the floor. Liquid sprayed the edge of his shoe, the socks underneath. It pumped out the end of the bottle until most of the rest—which wasn’t much—had stained a spot quickly approaching a puddle in the carpet.

He was already up, a hand running through his thin hair. “ _The beer couldn’t make it_ ,” he jittered, distantly. “ _Ugghhh…_ ” he jittered, dismally. He mumbled something incoherent beneath his breath as he stalked out of the room. His hands drawled through his thin hair. His jaw chattered. _Step. Step. Step._ Jeans rustling.

The door drifted to an almost-close behind him.

…

…

But Joyce could still hear him.

She was curled up onto the couch, her fingers arched at her mouth and a hair strand or two in her eye. She was looking back over the cushion, her neck and hips bent awkwardly, her arms caving into the leather. Her heart beat a staccato rhythm to the sound of the under-house pipes rattling.

She could hear him in the bathroom. She could hear him as his moans echoed from the poor acoustics, floating down the hall. She could hear him as he gurgled from the near-scalding water he blasted from the faucet and plunged into his eyelids and let run down his face and into his mouth.

She snatched her phone from the armrest.

 

Something else  
---  
Sorry?  
Show me something else  
One moment, Joyce.  
Please  
  
 

A sound from the bathroom like someone shot a dog on the bottom of the church steps and left it to shriek and bleed out on the tiles while G—

 

*

 

His face, lit by torchlight in the darkness. His grimace, strung.

“Ready for a bedtime story, Joycey?” he rumbled. “Muahahaha. Haha. Haha _ha_!”

He failed to stifle a grin and collapsed into genuine laughter.


	17. VI

## VI

‘How is she?’

These things happen. They come suddenly and without warning, without harbinger of tragedy, or loss. They happen, seemingly directly, to you, to _your_ heart, and if you are unprepared, if your barriers are not in place, there is no defence against it. It will hit you like a wave, and it will sweep you, away and away, far out into the sea, without a ship, without a preserver. It will strand you. So you need to swim. You need to fight the tide, because it won’t let up,—okay? You have a big, strong heart, I know you do, and you should never let anyone tell you otherwise. But these things,—these terrible things,—they require more than heart. They require will. They require intelligence, and resolve. Because change,—there is a quote, from a Greek philosopher. You know how much I respect them. He said, ‘Nothing endures but change.’ _Nothing endures but change_. It is a hard truth. But I believe in you, and I believe in your ability to confront it. And we will always, _always_ be here to support you in that, okay? Okay?

Joseph closes the door silently, then turns to his wife. There are bags under his eyes, and his hair is slick with grease.

‘Better,’ he mumbles. ‘Than yesterday.’ He flattens his fingers against his stubble. ‘Her temperature has fallen somewhat, and she claims to have slept better during the night.’

‘What of her dreams?’

A beat. ‘Gone. All gone, she says.’

Helen stares into his eyes for several seconds, as if searching for something. Then, she breathes out, closes her own, and tilts her head away. ‘She is lying, then.’

Joseph takes a breath, his lips parting. ‘Helen—’

‘We heard her screams,’ she continues. Her eyes are still closed, and her voice is careful, objective. ‘She must have overhead us this morning.’

Joseph pulls her into an embrace, his eyes wet but his lips set stern. He rubs his hands along the blades of her upper back, and feels her warm, wineless breath on his cheeks.

‘Why won’t she let us make her happy, Joseph?’

He sighs raggedly into her neck and grips her tighter. ‘She is too crafty for that.’

She smiles, squinting harder. ‘The silent warrior. She _is_ a Morris, isn’t she?’

A tear rolls down his cheek and drips onto her shoulder. ‘Indeed.’

They embrace there, together, on the edge of the hallway, as Minnie stares up at the ceiling of pink pastel and faces death. She coughs, five times, in deteriorating succession—they’re phlegm-tinged, rough, pained—and with a rattling sigh, she closes her eyes, and waits.

‘How am I seeing this?’ says a voice.

It sounds from outside her room, in the hallway, past Helen and Joseph, past the rug, past the bluebeam that now slides narrow, segmented, down into the steps. It sounds from Jerry, a near-adult, who watches the parents through the moonlight with a disturbed fascination. Nearer to him, stood a purposeful six metres away, is a figure of dark tourniquets with a slump in one leg and its hands clasped below the small of its back. Its face is a partially-lit construction of fractured human anatomy and bloodied bandage, with a clean one self-imposed around the eyes and the back of the head. Its mouth is a hanging snarl as it speaks, but the voice is rich, deep, and,—strangely,—juvenile.

‘After having been under its influence for a prolonged duration of time,’ says the tourniquets, ‘you begin to observe memories not experienced by your own eyes, either from those whose minds were leeched upon or from those who were consumed. I believe it is a failsafe designed to trap those unaffected by their own past.’

Jerry nods, slowly. Through the blue, he sees Helen and Joseph take their arms apart from each other.

‘She wants Arthur,’ Joseph says, wiping his eyes.

Helen sighs, her gaze still shuttered. ‘Then get her Arthur,’ she says,—and they disappear.

Jerry clears his throat with a fist, then glances over to his side. ‘Does that mean that I’m… unaffected?’ he says. ‘Am I safe?’ he says, quicker.

The tourniquets appears to look over at him despite the blindfold, the tendons of its stumped neck stretching through the bandages. ‘ _That_ does not, no. It will still make attempts to reach you personally, and you may still succumb to them. You were verging on this earlier, before I broke you out of your spell.’

‘When I was talking to Joyce?’

‘A memory,’ it clarifies.

‘Oh.’ His eyebrows twitch a little, and he purses his lips.

The tourniquets raises its arm into a gesture Jerry interprets as something either vaguely defensive or explanatory. He can’t help but jump a little: the arm seems to stretch and loop by itself in the pale hallway.

‘You needn’t worry, however,’ it says. ‘You are all but preserved from consumption for reasons you likely already understand, if not consciously.’

‘So I’m safe, then?’ he asks.

‘Within reason.’

He takes a rattling breath. ‘Then, how do I save Joyce?’

A silence. Six coughs from beyond the door to Minnie’s room.

‘Follow me, if you would,’ it says, and limps through the bluebeam.


	18. 11

## 11

Not a soul.

Not a soul but him and her, bag of bags slung over his back and her hair hung over in a ponytail. The air played a soft melody on their cheeks, and the roiling green sun laid down the beat. A fly or two, or three, or fourteen, buzzed on their backs a hard sawtooth harmony that overwhelmed more than it pleased.

November 14th, 2015.

Picnic Day.

“We should have Picnic Day,” announced Joyce.

Her father, arms perked up to the straps of the bag, looks down at Joyce with a hint of a smile. “What’s Picnic Day?”

“It’s, well—duh. It’s Picnic Day.” She shrugs her shoulders and gestures into the air. “Day of picnic, name of Picnic Day.”

“Right,” he said. “But, when was the last time you went for a picnic?”

“So?”

“So?” He laughed. “ _So_ , how do you know we should have Picnic Day if you barely know what goes on in a picnic?”

“I’ve seen it on TV.”

“Right.”

They crossed a path and passed a playground: all colour-faded, melting plastic, and that soft eggshell mulch-rubber underneath. A lone mother with a pram sat on the bench nearby, nursing a newborn and watching warily as her other two children gradually sunk into the equipment.

There were other people about here, too, on this sunlit day. A bushy man in a singlet walked his panting dog. A group of shirtless teens blasted hi-hat rolls out a bluetooth speaker and kicked a footy around. An elderly couple clutching a parasol took slow, lumbering steps on the gravel path, their eyes struck forward in their sockets as if trying to forget the other was there.

There were things going on, there was music, activity—but this was precisely the problem.

“We need somewhere quiet,” said Joyce, stopping. “Somewhere we can actually talk, and hear the birds.”

Her father stopped too. He stood there, put a hand to his stubbled chin; turned to her.

“I know a place.” Grinned.

 

—

 

They could see most of the pond from this spot. It stretched out for a good 200 metres into an irregular shape looking something like an amoeba, and its mossy surface was camouflaged by the equally-as-green rays of the sun. Surrounded as it was by the reeds and gums it looked like an ever-changing arena, mastered by the rippling tide and host to deadly battles between ducks and water-beetles.

Joyce peered in through to the water between the gum-trunks. “This is a nice spot.”

“Yeah. Used to go fishing ‘round here in the spring.” He slid the bag off his back and pulled his water bottle out from its pocket.

“Can fish even live in this thing?”

“Yeah.” He took a swig, then screwed back on the cap. “Oh, well, I dunno,” he gasped. “It wasn’t a bit as mossy back then.”

She pulled her head back through. “When was this?”

“Before I met your mum.”

“Oh, wow!” she exclaimed. “Ancient history.”

“Yeah,” he chuckled. “Yeah. A Golden Age, for sure.” He swung the bag back over his shoulders and walked over near the bank, peered through the trunks himself. “Me and a few buds—y’know—we’d come out here on an October arvo, set up some fold-chairs, a pack of VB.” He leaned there for a couple moments, fingers tapping on the bark—then pulled out. “And go fishing!” he grinned.

“Cool.”

“Hang on, Joycey—speaking of.” He peered over her shoulder, then jogged across the grass over to the gravel path, where a couple wandered along with a pram.

“Neil!” he exclaimed, arms wide.

The husband looked over, his face turning from alarm to joyful recognition. “Oh, mate! How’s it—oof!” He hugged him back, thumped him on the shoulder, and they withdrew. “Good to see you, mate. How’s it been? It’s been ages!”

“Oh, y’know, got a house full of women to keep from—” Neil laughed “—imploding, y’know. Actually got Joycey back over there for a little mid-arvo…” Joyce’s hand gave a little wave, and she pulled out her phone with the other.

“You met my wife?” Neil asked.

“Oh, no I don’t believe…”

“I’m Kim,” she smiled, shaking his hand.

“Hi, Kim. Name’s—”

“Scored her summer of last year,” said Neil. “We got married in June.” Flashed his ring.

“Ah! You—” he gestured “—you seem happy together!”

Kim rolled her eyes. “He treats me like I’m his _trophy_ wife.”

“Yeah,” consoled Neil, “but you’re _my_ trophy wife.”

“Well, yes, that’s what I just—ooh.” He embraced her from the side and smooched her on the cheek. “Okay.”

“What’s, um,” said Joyce’s father, “what’s its name? The baby?”

“Her,” pointed Kim. “Her name is Arianna. She’s just a little sweetheart, though, isn’t she? Popped out just like that, no marks, no anything.”

“She’s beautiful.”

“We were thinking of naming her Shaniqua,” said Neil, “but Kim said it sounded a bit too _foreign_ so we went—”

 

*

 

“Took your sweet time.”

“Sorry,” panted Joyce’s father, jogging back over. “Haven’t seen him in years, had to have a chat.”

“He seems a bit… y’know.”

“What?”

She raised her eyebrows—chuckled. “Nothing.”

“What?” he repeated.

“Nothing! Nothing.” She handed him his backpack. “Where’re we going?”

He slung it over his back, turned to her. Grinned. “I know a place.”

“You already said that.”

“What?” He frowned. “Oh. Anyway, there’s a place ‘round here. It’s further along, right up next to the bank.”

“Even closer than where we already are?” she questioned. “How are we going to get there?”

He walked up next to a thick tower of shrubbery at the edge of one of the gum-trunks. It reached high and loomed large, extending taller than the two of them combined.

“Well…” he said. “Through the bushes and between two trees…” he trailed his fingers along the twigs, hit a dent, and then separated the leaves with two hands “…lies a beautiful grove of bugs, and dew.”

“Whoa,” she said, glowing. “Are you a poet? Wait—I keep forgetting you write.”

“Isn’t this a good secret, though?”

“Oh, no, yeah, this is awesome.”

“Yeah.” He began climbing through. “Me and your mum used to come through here and fool around back in the day.”

“Dad. Gross.”

“What? It was only a bit of smoochin’.” He turned ‘round, back hunched, and lifted away a bit of hanging brush. “Bit less kept than I remember. Come on!”

Joyce climbed in. For a moment her hair got stuck in the twigs and leaves, threatening to loose her tie, but she managed it. After pushing back the shrubbery, she found herself by the edge of a dense collection of gums, the grass growing patchy beneath her feet and the air—surprisingly—more cold. Sunlight still streamed plentifully down through the treetops, but it was almost as if its heat was stripped as it flowed down through the pan flute trunks and onto the leafy floor.

A half-empty McDonald’s frozen coke cup lay on its side by a gum.

“You coming? Ooh—” he shuddered “—just got a drop of water down my neck.”

“Probably from the rain last night.” Her feet crunched on leaf.

“Watch out for snakes, by the way.”

“I eat snakes for breakfast.”

“Harder to see without much light.”

“Typical solar-powered snakes,” her mouth moved. “The skin always tastes a bit too renewable for me.”

He dragged a hand along a gum-trunk as he walked. “I’m being serious, Joyce.”

“I know. That’s what makes it funnier,” she heard herself say.

She reached instinctively for her phone, but relaxed her hand before she could get it in her pocket.

The two walked on in silence for a while, their feet alternately crunching on leaf and padding on grassy dirt. There were the sounds of birds from the branches above, their calls unexpectedly close, and that conflictingly cool sensation of the green sun appeared to amplify as its presence grew brighter. Past more trunks, more leaves, and a spiderweb home to a creature that was likely more dangerous in bulged appearance than in function—they reached it. Between two trees—and around those two about seven more—was the grove: a small, bright, verdant clearing of flowers, bees and grass, leading out into the pond via a branch-framed, umbilical-like peninsula. It was spacious, and yet, due to the huddling of the trees, close, and comfortable.

Joyce’s father set down his pack with a grunt. “Well, here we are.”

She walked out into the middle of the clearing, her feet snapping twig, her head rocking back. The view, above: like an ocean of drifting algae with patches of blue.

“This,” she said, “is actually kind of fantastic.”

“Thought you’d like it.”

“You can actually hear, like, _nature_. I don’t even have to listen to that dumb trap song anymore.”

“D’you notice the echo?”

“Yep.” A moment—and her voice reverberated between the gum-trunks, from shadow to dim shadow, and then back again, into the light. “I won’t shout though, ‘cause that’d ruin it. Probably anger a tree spirit or two.”

He unzipped the backpack and pulled out a flannel picnic blanket, grabbed two corners with two hands, and shook it out. “You going to help me set up?”

Joyce stopped on her way to the branch-frame, tried to turn her head. “Yeah, sure,” she said—tried to turn her head. But there was no sensation. It was as if a number was spun on a rotary dial, pushed to the finger stop—and held there.

Her phone buzzed in her pocket. With a stiff hand, she pulled it out.

 

You didn't say that.  
---  
  
 

She held it for a few moments, ran our message over in her mind. She didn’t say that, so she sighed, closed her eyes. She didn’t say that, so she locked the phone, put it back in her pocket, and said, “No, I’m good,” instead—and walked away onto the peninsula.

She sat down on the sandy bank, her hands digging into the dirt, her canvas shoes fringing on the mud. She looked out onto the lime-drenched battlefield, where the ducks swam and dived, where a water-beetle waded onto a frail autumn leaf—the colour of maple. It attempted to climb up on its corner, scraped its tarsi against the surface and wiggled an antenna—and then it slid, off and down into the water, taking the leaf with it.


	19. VII

## VII

His shoulders tensed and his left hand shaped in a horizontal thumbs-up, Roy prepares the stroke. His stance is balanced precariously on his toes. His face is creased, focused, and frustrated, as he slides the cue along the web between his thumb and forefinger and strikes the velvet end against his cue ball.

The ball bounces and rolls slightly off to the side.

He blinks once, mechanically, then collapses against the billiards table in a grumbling sigh. He raises his fist, pounds it against the felt. He raises his fist again,—pounds it against the felt. He breathes out through his scrunched nose, makes a sound like a baby elephant that accidentally sucked a heaping mound of childhood inexperience through its trunk, then raises his fist—

‘Your stance could do with some work,’ says Arthur. He stands straight at one side of the table, balancing a cue of his own by the tip of a thumb. Though his expression is warm, his voice is cold to Roy’s perked ears.

‘ _Your_ stance could do with some work,’ he says, his tone stuck between biting retort and intelligent mockery.

Arthur keeps face. ‘Would you like me to show you my stance?’ he suggests.

‘ _Would you like me to show you my stance_?’ he mocks, again; then he pulls himself up, mumbles, ‘Yeah, okay,’ and stands to the side, rubbing his palm against his eye. ‘You aren’t as good a player as Father, though.’

Arthur strides about the edge of the table, cue held firmly in both hands. ‘Of course not.’

‘You should really be better, given the length of time that you’ve stayed here,’ Roy muses. ‘If I was allowed the billiards table back in England, I would be a master by now.’

‘Do you mind if I use your ball?’ asks Arthur.

Roy grins, teeth baring. ‘Will you score me a point?’

‘I will try.’

‘Okay, you can use it.’

Arthur nods, then prepares his stance: one stretched movement, followed by one or two minute adjustments to the angles of his legs and arms. ‘Something I have noticed Joseph focus on is the position and slant of his right arm. Typically, it will serve, for him, as a counterbalance to the decline of his back and the arc of his right leg. This sustains his overall balance but does not compromise his reach nor accuracy, which is something you appear to struggle with.’

Roy, who has never before received such a detailed analysis of a billiards stance, nods, enamoured, though perhaps not entirely comprehending.

‘Additionally, notice the way in which the cue follows my eyeline. I believe you always want to look down the length of the cue, regardless of its angle. For example, if I were to point down on the ball like so,—’ he suitably demonstrates this, ‘—my eyeline would follow, and my legs and arms would stretch with it. Remember, though, to keep the general position stable as you follow through. When Joseph plays, I have noticed that his forearm stays fixed to his eyeline,—it is the upper arm that moves, like a swing, as he follows through.’

Arthur threads the cue, making it strike against the cue ball with a click. It shoots hard against the left rail, then the far, and comes to a stop close to the right corner pocket.

He raises himself to a standing position, needling the side of his chin with a fingernail. ‘Perhaps I am better with the theory than I am with the execution.’

Roy, meanwhile, is struck with awe. Throughout all the time he has spent watching his father play, memorising the rules and keeping score, never has he been so gratefully given such insight into the construction of a simple stance and stroke.

‘Do that again,’ he says. It comes out as an order, but is softened by an eager, innocent curiosity. ‘Could you?’

Arthur looks at him with a fresh face, and a freshly-sprouted, somewhat flattened smile. ‘Which step?’

‘The one where you hit the ball.’

Arthur once again prepares his stance: one stretched movement, followed by several minor, flustered adjustments to his legs and arms. He threads back the cue.

‘Now stop there.’

He stops.

Roy tilts his head, looking his stance up and down. ‘Now, what I have a hard time understanding is…’

The two exchange like this for a period, Roy pausing the servant like a stage director would his actor and questioning certain aspects of his play, with Arthur happy to oblige through clarifications of articulation and detail. Confident with his newly obtained knowledge, Roy soon steps up to the table to try his hand at a stroke once more and finds that, with Arthur’s influence, he is able to strike the ball with no more effect but a far greater level of confidence.

‘Remember,’ Arthur reminds him, ‘to relax your shoulders.’

‘They _are_ relaxed.’

‘Not from this perspective. Take deep breaths.’

Roy huffs, but, after a moment, closes his eyes, and follows Arthur’s advice. Shortly, his shoulders drop from their arches, flattening into hills that roll rather than spire.

Arthur nods. ‘Very good.’

‘Do I hit it now?’

‘Just remember to move only your upper arm and sustain focus on your cue ball.’

Roy nods, and squints. He swings his upper arm,—forth, back, forth,—back and forth,—and nods again.

Then pauses. ‘But I do hit it now, yes?’

There is a moment’s pause, then a laugh, a rich laugh,—Arthur’s laugh,—one beige and creamy, that breaks the silence. Roy freezes, his lips purse: a quizzical look, as if he is hearing the call of a strange, exotic bird.

‘Yes, Roy,’ says Arthur in-between sparks of laughter. ‘Do hit it now.’ He coughs and clears his throat, ending forcefully the bout of hysterics. He is, however, unable to strip the unrestrained smile from his face.

Roy nods, threads back the cue. He breathes in, and out, through his nose, and his eyes squint shut with tense ferocity.

They open again. His index finger tightens around the cue.

He strikes.

And Roy follows the ball as it rolls along the felt, and he imagines the dolphin-spot diving and dodging the green fibres as it spins around, and around, as it strikes against the object and propels it at least three inches toward the centre of the table.

‘Yes,’ he breathes. ‘Yes, yes, yes yes yes.’

Arthur claps. ‘Excellent work.’ He walks over and slaps a hand on his shoulder. ‘Well on your way to masterdom.’

Roy looks up at him, his face beaming. ‘I actually hit it!’ he exclaims.

Arthur grins. ‘You did! You hit it. Now, I believe the next step is pocketing the ball.’

‘I just have to hit it harder, right?’

‘Not necessarily.’ He offers his hand. ‘Pass me the cue?’

One of the doors leading to the antechamber opens abruptly with a rough creak. In floods dim sunlight and the face and neck of Joseph Morris. Arthur jumps, his smile stripped, faces the doorway and swings his arms and hands behind his back.

Joseph raises an eyebrow. ‘There you are, Arthur.’ He opens the door wider and slips inside, his head threading between the servant and his son. ‘There is still a basket of laundry to be done.’

Arthur nods quickly and takes a breath. ‘Yes,—my apologies, Joseph. I will tend to that right away.’

‘No, no matter,’ says Joseph. ‘It seems you are running double on child-rearing duties today. Minnie wants you, up in her room.’ He smiles, but the corners of his lips stay far detached from his eyes.

Arthur nods again, slower this time. ‘Ah,’ he says. ‘I will be up with her promptly.’

‘Good.’ He holds the door open for him. With a slight hesitation, Arthur crosses the room, hands tucked, and exits into the antechamber.

…

Joseph glances about the room. ‘Pack this up, Roy.’

‘But, Father—’

‘You have study to do. You cannot be spending your free days lazing around like I so often see of you.’

Roy, reluctantly, droops his head and affirms his allegiance. He returns the cue to the cabinet.

‘And Roy?’ says Joseph. His son looks up to him, the alacrity of his blushed cheeks contradicting the watery, retreating quality of his eyes. Joseph falters, shakes his head slightly with lips parted. ‘Never mind,’ he says, and exits the room.

‘This is what you are up against,’ rumbles a voice.

It sounds from outside the billiards room, into the antechamber, past Joseph and into the entrance hall, past Arthur and up the creaking stairs and past the rug, past the side-tables, past the door to the observatory. It sounds from the dark tourniquets, who hunches at the base of the stone steps and gestures limply toward the windows curved around the end of the landing. Jerry, hesitantly, follows his arm, his sneakers making echoed squeaks that bounce about the walls, and the settees, and the tables, and then into his pocket. He approaches the window, green light diffusing against his face, down along his shoulders and the lengths of his arms, and concentrating in the palm of the splayed hand with which he stretches and touches the glass.

It is cold, under his skin.

‘How…?’ he trails. ‘It’s like a…’

‘What do you see?’

He shakes his head, drops his hand, and takes a step back. ‘It’s just green,’ he says. ‘Just green light. Like the sun, but,—I can stare into it.’

‘Like the sun,’ it repeats. It heaves, gradually, up the stairs, the movements of its legs uneven and considered, the knot of its blindfold sweeping jaggedly across its neck. ‘Do you wish to know what I see in these windows?’ It approaches a pane, and tucks its hands not at its tailbone, but at its front. ‘I see fields of rolling green. Countryside, as far as the eye can see. Cows, sheep, horses: grazing. The rubble of things that were once cobblestone walls, now bordering land. The foundations of what were once castles and towers, now built upon by townhouses.’

‘That isn’t Brimmingstoke.’

It shakes its head. ‘It is history. Even one hundred years ago, it was, supposedly, history. And yet.’ It gestures again to the window. ‘Here it lies.’

Jerry squints into the glass. ‘I don’t get it,’ he says. ‘Are you seeing the past?’

‘No. I am, in essence, seeing into my own heart. Though it attempts to persuade one otherwise, it has no power over time, nor space.’ It holds a bandaged finger to its temple, then its chest. ‘Mind, and heart. Those are the forces it holds influence over, as those are the forces that tie us to the people and places we hold most dear.’

‘Then why don’t I see anything?’ Jerry says. ‘I just see green. Why?’

‘I think, perhaps,’ says the tourniquets, ‘it has captured your imagination elsewhere, and does not think it detrimental, for _your_ purpose, to pull back the curtain on certain aspects of its façade.’

There are two vibrations,—harsh, short,—from Jerry’s pocket. He reaches in and pulls out his phone, the screen already

 

| Me, climbing all over shit. You, cowering, acting paranoid about me climbing all over shit. Tomorrow night. Old health co-op. Ghost hunt. You in? | 12:13AM  
---|---|---  
  
 

activated and glowing brightly over his features. He looks from it to the tourniquets, sees that it is enraptured by the apparent vista of the outside, and so focuses back, swipes a finger across its length, and writes a response.

 

| I’m in the observatory with the thing if you want to come down | 12:13AM  
---|---|---  
  
 

He sends it, focuses on the screen for a few more seconds, rubbing the side of the phone’s plastic casing with his left thumb. Then there’s the sound of stretched leather beside him, so he locks the phone and puts it back in his pocket.

‘I go days, sometimes, living in that façade,’ it says. Its arms are crossed over its scarred chest. ‘It is easy to live through memories you have already lived. All the work is done. You have only to retrace your footsteps.’

Another two,—no, four,—vibrations, and Jerry pulls out

 

| What? | 12:14AM  
---|---|---  
  
 

his phone again. The first message invokes little response, but

 

| Also -- what? | 12:14AM  
---|---|---  
  
 

the second gives him pause, and a semblance of a smile. Without so much as a glance to his hunched guide, he begins writing a response.

‘When the simple process of opening a door or examining an object from a certain point of view can release the floodgate of a memory, one’s curiosity

 

| Nevermind. How are you? What are you up to right now? | 12:14AM  
---|---|---  
  
 

approaches compulsion. It is easy to lose yourself when your reality is conforming to the desires and indulgences of _you_. It is comfort.’ It pauses, and tilts its head,—only slightly. ‘There is a selfishness there, obviously. Not only of others (I have not truly interacted with ‘others’ for over a century) but of one’s self. Of one’s mind, specifically. Because whilst the heart is yearning to beat in the same rhythm as it has always, the mind is,—or, perhaps,

 

| A bit scared for my life, after whatever that message was. Reads like the trailhead for an ARG, except shit, and not in binary. | 12:15AM  
---|---|---  
  
 

should be,—yearning for change. It is, inherently, a contradiction. Potentially a volatile one if one does not strike the right balance. It is something that I believe I fear, and it is for that reason

 

| But yeah, not much. Are you in for some ghost hunting tomorrow? | 12:15AM  
---|---|---  
  
 

that the scales of my desire so often swing toward the regularity of the heart.’

The tourniquets sighs and uncrosses its arms, looping them about its tailbone instead. It appears to gaze out into the supposed countryside for a moment, despite the blindfold. Perhaps it does see sheep, and cobblestone. Perhaps it does feel the cool, steady breeze, and hear as it rustles grass-leaf. But there is only green upon its features.

It gazes over to Jerry, its neck first a smooth, interpolated motion,—then a jolt.

‘You are messaging it again,’ it says.

Jerry looks up mid-sentence, startled. ‘Oh, uh…’ He glances down, and back up, a finger held over the lock button,—then takes a step backward. ‘Yeah.’

The tourniquets cranes its neck forward. ‘Do you not trust me?’ it asks, its rich tone almost incredulous.

Jerry’s left shoulder brushes against the window, and he stops,—sighs. ‘Not really.’ The phone’s glare illuminates a face wary and reserved in the lips and the jaw, but above them, two open, relaxed eyes.

The tourniquets exhales out of its stamped nose, first shallowly, then deeply, paired with a droop of its head and a gradual rotation to face the opposite end of the landing. It shuffles forward some steps, its left hand trailing along the glass, then turns back.

‘But I am telling you everything,’ it says. ‘I am helping you.’

‘What you’re telling me,’ replies Jerry, gripping the phone tighter, ‘is crazy. And I can’t know if it’s helping me, honestly.’

‘Why is it…’ the tourniquets mumbles,—then trails off. It raises a fist to its blindfold,—Jerry flinches,—but rubs the bare, bandaged scalp above it instead. ‘Your friend,’ it says, lowering its arm. ‘I envy her. Who is she? Who is it that you think you are talking to?’

‘Why should I tell you that?’

‘You should tell me that,’ it rumbles, ‘because you know that I can find out regardless of your consent.’

‘How do I know?’

The sound of stretching leather echoes against the windows as its fist clenches. ‘You know, because you witnessed it happen.’

‘Drugs,’ retorts Jerry. ‘You needled me with some,—’ he falters for a moment, rubbing his tongue along the points of his teeth, ‘—hallucinatory shit to make me see things.’

It shakes its head. ‘You did not react this way just fifteen minutes earlier.’

‘And the images of Joseph, and, whoever.’ He is gesticulating with the phone in his hand now. ‘They’re projections. Just light. I could’ve seen one,—a projector,—in the room I tried to hide in, earlier. That was the lens glinting.’

The tourniquets gazes back out through the window.

‘This is all just a—’ He falters, again, and chuckles out through his nose despite himself. ‘It’s an amusement ride, yeah? It’s a haunted house. There’s some little guy hiding behind the walls, and, and,—pulling levers, and pushing buttons, and playing little sound files out through the speakers.’

He stares expectantly at the tourniquets for several long, silent seconds, then bites his lip and turns away. His eyes fall back down to the phone. The words ‘slide to power off’ glisten near the top edge of the screen.

It speaks, ‘Was that a statement, or a plea?’ then turns its head. ‘This is real. You know it is real, because you saw it. I made you.’

‘I know,’ Jerry mutters.

‘I made you look into the machine, because the machine wanted that of you. And who is it that you saw?’

There is silence, for a few moments. Then, a sound from his mouth akin to a spacecraft entering hyper-speed, suffering a fault midway, and then coming to a jagged stop.

‘Her name is Joyce,’ he says. ‘Joyce Pearson.’


	20. 12

## 12

Fluoro ceiling strips. Humming electrics. Metal dividers extended like flat accordions across the width of the mall corridor, arbitrarily partitioning one section of hallway from the other.

“Do you think she notices?” asked Joyce.

“Doesn’t look it.” He took a sip from his coffee mug.

Wood-panel rafters. Rattling metal. A mall security guard extending a metal divider like a flat accordion across the entrance of the food court, arbitrarily partitioning Joyce and her father from the escalators leading down into the parking lot.

“Are we stuck here?” asked Joyce.

He drained the remainder. “Looks like it.”

The security guard rubbed her eye with the heel of a hand. She sniffed—the sound echoed, skipped across the pristine tiles into another part of the mall, and she followed it as if in lazed pursuit.

Joyce squeaked her chair back, stood up, and rushed over to the divider. She tried pushing her hand through one of the rhombi holes, got a light scrape along the length of her arm, and then twisted the lever by it instead. It went, but the action didn’t conclude with a satisfying _click!_ to indicate the pulling of the latch. She twisted it harder, shook it—but it wouldn’t budge.

“Locked,” she informed upon arriving back at their table. “We need a key.”

“Locked?” he said.

“Yeah. We need a key.”

“Why didn’t you ask the lady to get us out? I thought that’s what you were doing when you went over there.”

“But then she’d _hear_ us!” she whispered.

“That’d be the idea.”

“No,” she said. “Mall security guards are evil.”

“Joyce.”

“We need a key.” She tucked an arm under her elbow and tapped her forehead as if in serious thought. “Or a bolt-cutter.”

“We’ll need to climb out.” He gathered the garbage and wrappers strewn across the table’s surface and compressed them into a misshapen ball. Stood up. “I’ll go throw this crap out and we’ll take a look.”

 

—

 

“Joycey, get down. I got a chair.”

She unhooked her fingers from the rhombi handholds and dropped to the floor with a smack. Her father set the chair down, tried the lever himself, tried to push the divider away—failed. He looked down its length, and judging that there was no way to squeeze through on either side, he rubbed his nose and said, “Alright. You go first, Joycey.”

Joyce climbed up, wobbled, and gripped onto the chair’s back.

“Careful,” he said. “Actually, maybe I’ll go first—catch you on the way down.”

“I’m good.”

He sniffed—sighed. “Okay.”

She put one leg up on top of the accordion and a thin rattle echoed throughout the court, between the legs of chairs, into bins, against the windows of the still-illuminated coolers behind darkened counters. With a grunt, she gripped the metal, jumped once, twice—and pulled herself up.

“I’m a horseman,” she said, bouncing up and down. “Horse rider man. What do you call that?”

“Don’t be stupid, Joyce.”

“Alright.” She swung over her other leg, stared back for a moment over her shoulder as if contemplating something—and then jumped down.

Her father came after with coffee mug in hand.

 

—

 

Smoke-stained upholstery. An idling engine. Joyce seatbelted in the back with her elbow at the windowsill and her father in the driver’s seat waiting for the revs to cool down. He unscrewed the sports-capped drink bottle in his left hand and poured its contents into the coffee mug in his right.

Joyce twisted her focus over on the palm of her hand. “Like your coffee cold, Dad?” she said.

He hesitated, the liquid flow coming to a dripping stop—then he screwed the bottle, lidded the mug, and put both into the drink holders behind the gear stick.

He shifted the car into reverse. “Be quiet ‘til we get home, alright, Joycey?” His eyes floated in the rear-view mirror.

Joyce looked away, out the window, into the dim carpark.

 

—

 

Light from the light posts either side of the highway: it flashed alternately through the dark of the car every three and a half seconds, cutting shadows near the base of Joyce’s crossed feet and giving a little glisten to her eyes. Her left cheek was smushed up by her palm, giving the outside view of the traffic barriers, and the whoever’s land, and the smoky shunter’s leg, and the moon beyond that a dreary, diplopic quality.

A transport truck blocked her view with a grumble and a rumble, so she turned away, looked down to the shadows dancing at her feet. Closed her eyes.

Opened them—and pulled out her phone, taking care not to look across to the driver’s seat. We had already sent her a message.

 

You appear disturbed by something.  
---  
This isn’t what I thought it would be like.  
What did you think it would be like?  
  
 

Joyce thought back, back to the movie night, back to the bedtime stories, to the first day at school, to the parent teacher meeting, to the picnic blanket and the job interview and her mum and the coffee mug sitting, untouched, in the drink holder behind the stick shifted to fifth gear.

Light illuminated her fingers in rapid, lapping waves as she typed.

 

The more I go back, the more I realise I’m looking through the eyes of a complete dickhead.  
---  
Would you like to progress to the final stage?  
  
 

A right turn down, down onto the road of cracked overgrowth as Joyce typed out her response. Eucalypt leaves cradled the car’s shiny shell.

 

Excellent. It will be just a moment — don’t mind the vertigo.  
---  
  
 

She nodded, brushed her thumb up and down across the phone screen, sending the text log flying, then put it back in her pocket.

She looked up, yelled—grabbed the handle of the door with her left hand and the leather corner of the seat with her right.

Stuttering gum-leaves. Rustle, rustle, rust. The car jittering back and forth into the eucalypts—back and forth, back and forth—to the droningly-intonated sound of leaves rustling, layering on top of itself over—and over, and over—and over, and over again. She felt her left hand slip away, but not _from_ the doorhandle. Her right hand came with it, as the car and her father disappeared without a sound, without a _pop!_ , without cause. The leaves came next. She caught a glimpse of the train tracks beyond, and the town (it looked almost blocky, largely rectangular in texture), and then all that disappeared, and then the approaching asphalt, and the world, and the sky, until—

“Shall we begin?”

She was floating. Floating in a gradient of sun and moon, her hands still clutched onto nothing, her feet still crossed against leather non-existent. She reached out, instinctively, into the space, saw that her hands and arms—her near-adult hands and arms—failed to reflect the light. She blinked, kicked her legs; shadows danced across the colour like rapid wax boluses in a globular lava lamp.

They coalesced into a silhouette of a figure, rippling, turned away to face the gradient horizon.

Us—the pirate—the unkempt sailor.

We asked her, “Are you comfortable?”

She spun to face us, and nodded.

“I thought we might take leave of the ship for a period. You didn’t look quite so healthy before we disembarked—though the salt had done wonders for your skin.”

We saw our lips curl, felt a vein pulse across the curve of the gradient. Something rose from our chest and into our throat—something hard, and spiked, like an urchin. It stabbed into our voice box as it rolled up the wet, and with a final push and a tickle of our tonsils, it spewed out along the tongue and between our parted lips.

We doubled over, raised our palm to our mouth. More urchins came rolling, splattered onto our hand like ink sacs and trailed down our wrist.

Laughter. It was laughter.

“Joyce!” we exclaimed. Laughed some more. “Your mind—it is incredible. I feel…” We shook our head, raised our arms to the heavens, ink bubbling out our mouth and dripping down our chin. “Irony. Self-deprecation. Humour. How does he _do_ it?” We clenched our fist and twisted inward our hook. “How does he dismiss your gifts with such eagerness?”

She looks on, her eyes adjusting minutely, scanning our frame. There’s a slight contraction in her eyelids, and we lower our arms.

“This is what you have been frustrated about, yes? His unwillingness to understand you. His frequent refusal to reciprocate your gestures of mirth. With consultation,” we said, “we can remedy this. For this is an error in judgement.”

We lowered our arms. “You can speak, Joyce, you know.”

“I just want to see him again,” she said. Though her voice was low in volume, it carried through the space. There was no echo here.

She breathed a deep breath in. We felt that her shoulders were tense, felt her heartbeat ba-gump, ba-gump, ba-gump. We opened our mouth to speak, and as we did, she did. She sensed, though, that we had something to say, so she shut it. There’s a good girl.

“Are you certain you are comfortable with that idea?” we proposed. “Would it not be, perhaps, more fruitful if your father were to appreciate you for your idiosyncrasies? Would you not develop a stronger bond?”

“Maybe,” she said—but there was another voice beyond it, in her mind, repeating, _You don’t get it_. _You don’t get it_. _You don’t get it_ —, “but I don’t want to change me and him. I just…” She rubbed her tongue over her front teeth. “I just want to talk to him again, and say… I dunno.”

She floated there, for a moment, as we gazed away at the horizon. The colour was shifting, the weld gliding from the so-prompted movement of the sun and moon, and ourselves, with them. Joyce tracked our rotation as instinctively as she earlier reached out to feel the space.

“You do realise,” we began, “that I cannot know anything more about your relationship with your father than is revealed through the memories you decide to traverse. If there is indeed something else I am not understanding—” we gestured outward with my hook as she bit her lip “—perhaps you could tell me through further…”

We stopped—lowered it.

“I am speaking to a wall, am I?” We smiled. “You wish to interrupt me. Are you truly so adverse to consultation that you would jeopardise the very objective of this process?”

“I don’t want to change me and him.”

“I _understand_ this, Joyce,” we stressed, incredulous, feeling another urchin climb up our throat. “But do you _know_ what you want? Is that truly the reality that will provide you happiness and fulfillment?”

“Yes,” she said, without hesitation. “Yes it is.”

A moment—a moment for both of us—passed, as the weld shifted further. We pursed our lips in an attempt to stop the flow, but the urchins kept rising. They climbed up our throat, stabbed into our cheeks. They climbed up our throat, stabbed into the urchins stabbing into our cheeks. Ink staining our tongue and our lips white, they clogged up our throat—and we spewed them out, keeling over, and they came spilling over our beard and down onto our coat, stretching our mouth wide, wider, like the open jaw of a grinning skull. They launched down and around into the tint and mixed with it as if it were paint, left jet-trails that rushed along the circumference, staining, charring, linking.

“Very well,” we spluttered coarsely. “I will bring you yourself and him as we have seen it.” We wiped our lips with an arm, swallowed, cleared our throat. We stood. “It was a pleasure to finally work with you, Joyce. You have been a fantastic client. Please—I will be just a moment!”

We grinned. Spat. And as our saliva hit the tint, the world turned to white.

Please wait…


	21. VIII

## VIII

‘ _In the winter, when the fields were covered with snow, and the water with large blocks of ice that I blew up on to the coast_ …’

Minnie lies on her bed under blanket atop blanket, her eyes without light and her arms without doll. By the colour of her cheeks and the fragility of her frame, one might consider she has become porcelain herself. She articulates her neck so that her left ear is swallowed by the pillow, and watches Arthur as he reads from the thick, heavy book; as he turns its pages.

‘ _…crows and ravens came_ ,’ he tells, ‘ _all as black as might be, great flocks of them, and alighted on the dead, deserted, lonely ship by the shore, and croaked in horse accents of the wood that was no more, of the many pretty bird’s nests destroyed, and the little ones left without a home; and all for the sake of that great bit of lumber, that proud ship that never sailed forth_.

‘ _I made the snow-flakes whirl, and the snow lay like a great lake high around the ship, and drifted over it. I let it hear my voice, that it might know what a storm has to say. Certainly I did my part towards teaching it seamanship. Huh—sh! push along_!’

She imagines, in her mind’s eye, the ship laid by lapping, wintry shore. She hears the caws of the birds,—the reaping chimes,—and feels the history of the wood-grain beneath her fingertips. It is familiar, somehow.

Arthur, upon scanning the next paragraph, licks his thumb, folds a corner of the book, closes it, then looks up from the story. Minnie lies there, stares there, wistful but unseeing, into the space above his forehead. She looks down, then,—into his eyes,—and smiles.

‘That was a nice tale,’ she says.

‘That,’ he replies, ‘was not the end, actually. I believe Andersen allowed himself to be carried away in the writing of this story.’

‘What are you saying?’ she asks, quirking an eyebrow. ‘It is too long, you mean?’

Arthur looks down at the book. ‘It is inappropriate reading material for a child,’ he says. ‘I believe.’

Minnie nestles further into the pillow, brings her arms up to her chest, and closes her eyes. ‘Father would get mad at you if he heard you saying that.’

A pause, and a flash of alarm strikes against Arthur’s face. ‘Is that true?’

Minnie hums in agreement, and sighs into the cushion. ‘He goes on about philosophies of childhood, sometimes,’ she drawls, ‘and says that innocence is something made-up, and that people speak to children as if they’re not really human.’ She bends open an eye, swallows. ‘Could you keep reading?’

He stares for a moment, then starts. ‘Yes, yes, of course,’ he says, as he opens the book and flicks to the correct page. Minnie closes her eye and smiles.

‘ _And the winter passed away; winter and summer, both passed away, and they are still passing away, even as I pass away_ ,’ he says,‘ _as the snow whirls along, and the apple blossom whirls along, and the leaves fall—away! away! away_!’ He pauses, moves his thumb from its place on the page.‘ _And men are passing away too_!’

He stares up at Minnie, looks on for a moment. He states her name. Minnie lies there, arms curled to her chin, knees bent under the sheets, her eyes yielded, her smile faded,—her chest contracting and expanding to the sighs of her lungs and the subtle, relaxed arco hums of her vocal chords.

He relaxes the tension in his shoulders, closes the book, and places it on his lap.

He stares at her.

‘I will save you,’ he whispers, squeezing the bandage wound about his wrist. ‘Just a few more days.’

A voice. A sound.

The observatory.

Jerry leans there, one shoulder against the glass, his eyes affixed to the phone’s screen and watching the shine as it glistens from the power button to the tail of each word. He feels a heat rise in his cheeks, and as he lifts his hand to wipe away at his eyes, the screen fades to black.

‘Okay,’ says the tourniquets. ‘Joyce Pearson.’ It crosses its arms, loops one leg about the other, and then, with a heave, leans itself against a window pane. The glass bends slightly from its weight. ‘What was your relation with her?’

‘We were friends, about a year ago,’ he says, ‘since a few years ago. Met at school, in a class, I think. I honestly don’t remember.’ He rubs lip against lip. ‘We talked at school sometimes, but, we mostly had our own people, so a lot of it was online. You get what I mean when I say ‘online’, right?’

‘I understand.’

‘Okay.’ He activates the phone again and stares vaguely at the Skalpel notification. ‘We were good friends, anyway. Really good. We weren’t all we had, but, I think we were the best. I think we connected on a deeper level than most of anyone I knew at the time. We could tell each other shit, y’know?’ He smiles. ‘It was nice.’

The warmth of the sunlit window begins to feel uncomfortable on his cheek, so he twists himself around so that his back rests against the glass instead. His eyes close.

‘Then it all went to hell.’

Outside, in the hallway, six apparitions glance into existence in front of a grandfather clock from five separate strains of memory. One,—a thin young man in pooling coattails, holding an eye to the glass of a field camera, shutter cocked. Two,—a weary father with tangled hair hidden beneath a hat. Three,—a mother next to him, her lips thin and her jaw set. Four,—a boy with blushed cheeks and fingers clasped in a ball to his stomach. Five,—a dead body with bleached ones, fingers limp, propped atop a stool and held upright by the clutch of a neck brace. And six,—a near-adult, his fingers wrapped around the base of his tailbone, his cheekbones pressed down into his jaw, his lips stern, his hair swept,—and his eyes shut.

‘Joyce was all into the paranormal scene, from the point that I met her,’ Jerry says. ‘She was a bit awkward about it, at first, which is weird thinking back. But, one day I caught her watching these ghost sighting videos in class, and she spilled everything. She followed these crazy online mysteries, and, went on these forums…’ He smiles, again, almost grins, and shoots mirth out through his nose. ‘She brought these books to school,—these kid’s horror books, to school,—every day, and just pulled them out at recess or whenever she felt like reading. So you’d walk into the library, and at the back, you’d see some girl, reading a book with some dude being eaten alive by a jelly sandwich on the cover, or something.’

Outside, in the hallway, the sixth apparition scrunches his face, tilts his neck downward, and rushes forward. The camera fires as he moves out of its frame and pushes a hand to his forehead. Joseph stares. Helen looks away. The man in the pooling coattails shouts something, grabs his shoulder, but Arthur pushes him aside to dash about the others and climb up the ladder aside the grandfather clock, into the attic.

‘Anyway. She got really interested in urban exploration, and naturally, from that, ghost hunting. So we started going to old places together at night. She didn’t have any of the tools, but she said all we really needed were good eyes, and a willingness to connect with the spiritual realm.’ A pause. ‘She said it kind of ironically, but she meant it.’

Outside, in the hallway, the coattails sneers that dry plates don’t come cheap, and that a replacement photo would cost the family just as much as the first. Joseph, his daughter in his arms, informs him that the photo he has just taken will do just fine. He asks of him the earliest date at which the photo can be treated. The coattails replies with one two days from the present, barring any future clients more pressing. Joseph restrains from questioning the obvious.

‘So that was kind of us, for a while. Every Saturday night, she’d leave her house, I’d sneak out mine, and we’d go hunting. We never found anything, obviously, and…’ He trails off, seems to notice the tourniquets staring at him from across the glass, and shuffles uncomfortably. He sniffs. ‘I think she got frustrated. I dunno. We stopped the whole ghost hunting thing eventually, but kept the exploration. But it wasn’t really fun, anymore. There was this saying that she had, or got from somewhere, when we first started out. It was, ‘take only photographs, leave only footprints’. She didn’t really care for that anymore.’

‘Perhaps,’ says the tourniquets, ‘that was the point at which it began influencing her.’

Jerry shrugs. ‘I dunno,’ he says; sighs. ‘I dunno. All I know is that even though we weren’t hunting ghosts anymore, and it was just us going to these places and shooting the shit, I felt more…’ he gesticulates a hand and takes a breath, ‘…disconnected, from her, than ever.’ He shrugs, again. ‘I didn’t know her.’

The tourniquets appears to think for a moment, then nods. ‘Its clients have generally displayed, to me, a level of dissociation from external forces after contact.’

Jerry shuts his eyes, shakes his head slightly. ‘Okay.’

‘Were there any further signs of contact that you can identify, in hindsight?’

‘Does it matter?’ he asks, sliding a hand up over an eye and sweeping back his hair. ‘I don’t need you to diagnose her.’

There is silence, for a moment. ‘I am trying to help you come to terms.’

Jerry nods. ‘I know.’ He slides his hand back down. ‘I know.’

The tourniquets takes its weight off the glass, plants both feet on the stone and moves its arms into a bow at the fore of its hip. It stands there, like that, while Jerry avoids eye contact, gripping and releasing his hold over the phone and staring, lids closed, down at the floor.

‘So you were drifting away,’ it prompts. ‘What happened next?’

‘Nothing,’ he mumbles.

It leans forward. ‘Sorry?’

Jerry jerks away from the window. ‘Nothing,’ he says, stumbling. He turns to face it, swings his arms up from his hips and lets them fall. ‘We were drifting away. We _drifted_ away. She told me all about her dad, and her shitty mum.’ His voice is wet, but nearing a monotone. ‘Child protection found out,—fuck knows how. She probably called it _herself_ , for Christ’s sake.’ He twists the phone around in his hand,—nearly drops it. ‘Then, she, gets taken away in her new family,’ he gets out, ‘and then nothing. For a year. Nothing. Nothing but me, just, staring at the computer screen, waiting for something, waiting for—’ He breaks off.

From his mouth comes a rattled sigh that ends, abruptly, with a sob. He turns away and brings a palm up to the bridge of his nose.

‘Do you think,’ soothes the tourniquets, ‘that her isolation may have been consequent of—’

He twists, throws the phone from his other palm. It flies through the air,—a black, glimmering streak,—bounces off the glass with a hollow thud, then clatters onto the

 

| That’s cool, dude. | 12:20AM  
---|---|---  
  
 

stone.

‘I don’t care,’ he exclaims, ‘what it was _consequent_ of.’ He stares at it for a moment, water in his eyes. He swallows, looks downward, back up,—then takes off down the steps.

 

| Okay, so, you know how we used to go explore places at night? Like the old health co-op? And the school? Well, I found another one. | 12:23AM  
---|---|---  
  
 

The tourniquets lets its arms fall to its hips and moves after him. Its voice wavers, slightly, as it speaks. ‘It does not seem like you to be upset, Jerry.’

‘What the hell does that even mean?’ He walks faster. ‘Doesn’t seem like me to be anything.’

 

| I don’t know how we missed it, but there’s a mansion -- super abandoned -- back in Brimmingstoke. Or, well, back for me, anyway. You’re still a Brimmie. | 12:26AM  
---|---|---  
  
 

‘Don’t go,’ it rumbles.

‘Oh, I forgot,’ he creaks, clutching down the front of his hair with both hands. He stops. ‘You’ll meld with my eyeballs again if you catch me leaving.’

Its arms stay limp by its sides. ‘That isn’t what I mean.’

Jerry sobs, sniffs, releases a gravelly breath. He breathes in, then breathes out again, and sits himself on one of the swirl-patterned settees. Taking his palms from his forehead, he looks past the tourniquets, past the steps, onto the landing radiating with the light of the green sun. He gazes at the phone with a fire in his eyes, hears it

 

| Because it’s my birthday tomorrow. What, did you forget? | 12:29AM  
---|---|---  
  
 

vibrate, feels it want to chime.

The tourniquets limps over, and with a brace of its hands against the edge of the cushion, lowers its bulk onto the settee. It sits for a moment, head angled down toward the stone floor, then crosses one leg over the other and raises its hands to its knee.

 

| Just because I wasn’t talking to you doesn’t mean I forgot about you. | 12:32AM  
---|---|---  
  
 

Silence passes them by. There is barely even the creak of a wall, or the fluttering of a breeze against the window. Silence. Some may find it unnatural, but to the tourniquets, it is aural gold. Silence means a job well done. Silence means comfort, because sound indicates movement, and growth, and decay.

 

| It means I’ve been too busy and stressed out with my new life and haven’t had time for you. | 12:35AM  
---|---|---  
  
 

But here, and now, silence is something else. It is not silent because the necessary actions have been taken, and life has frozen for one sweet moment. It is silent because they are yet to be. Silence, here, now, is a means to the end.

 

| What? Excuse me? | 12:38AM  
---|---|---  
  
 

It clears its throat. ‘Do you think of me as a monster, Jerry?’

Silence.

 

| What are you talking about? | 12:41AM  
---|---|---  
  
 

Jerry looks on at the landing, on at the sunlight, on at the phone. He curls his fingers about each other, digs his elbows into his knees.

Little drops of rain slip down his cheek.

 

| Okay, you’re being so fucking immature right now. | 12:44AM  
---|---|---  
  
 

The tourniquets parts its mouth with a creak, then shuts. It stares out at nothing,—then drops its neck to stare at its clasped hands. Through the leather, through the bandage tied about its eyes, it sees young, weathered palms, fingers with wrinkles like crow’s feet,—and a bandage, white and freshly-applied, wound about the wrist.

 

| You still don’t understand how hard it was for me. It was hell. My mother was taken away, I had nobody, and then I get trundled off to the middle of the city with some white family who thinks they can rehabilitate me or some shit. | 12:47AM  
---|---|---  
  
 

Jerry’s head lowers, then twists to face the tourniquets. His face is dim, but his streaking tears are glittered with sunlight.

‘You serve that thing,’ he says, motioning to the window. ‘I don’t know if that makes you a monster or not.’

Its neck tilts, stutteringly, somewhere off to the right. ‘I…’ it trails,

 

| I think it fucking does, actually. You got so goddamn cold and reclusive, the only person in my life who could have actually given me support and you turned me away. | 12:50AM  
---|---|---  
  
 

attempts to compress its hanging lips. ‘I believe,’ it says, ‘sometimes, it is the decisions for which we feel no regret that haunt us the most.’

A breeze knocks against the window, sending shudders up the panes and creaking the posts behind the walls. The sunlight that was once solid and bright

 

| What? Your mummy issues? | 12:53AM  
---|---|---  
  
 

is now darker, and murkier, as if a sweeping, smoky hand has contaminated the air outside. Shades of navy and lime dance about like waveforms on the ceiling, and the floor, and the walls surrounding the glass, glowing in and out of intensity like shadows from a thin storm cloud rolling overhead on a sunny day.

 

| You’re an asshole if you think your shit even came close to mine. Fuck you.  
You at least have a mother. My entire family went nuclear, abandoned me, and left me dead in the afterglow.  
Message me tomorrow if you feel like apologising. I still want to do this despite your grudge-induced ego trip right now. Goodnight. | 12:56AM  
---|---|---  
  
 

Jerry stands, fingers trailing on the leather. ‘I should go,’ he says. He takes what he believes to be his last look into the light of the green sun, then turns back to his guide. ‘Thank you, Arthur,’ he says, and holds out his left hand.

The tourniquets stares at it for a few hesitative moments, observing, between the flashes of roiling sunlight, the nails, and the knuckles, and the small flecks of eczema dotting the back. Then, he raises his right hand, and with gentle force, he pushes Jerry’s fingers together until they form a fist.

‘Remember what I told you,’ it rumbles. ‘Do not let it box you in, and do not let it draw connections.’ He squeezes, then releases, and as he draws his hand away Jerry draws his own. ‘Do you need me to show you the way?’

He looks at the open door (his eyes move into the light) and then back. ‘I should be fine.’

The tourniquets nods, smiles. ‘Okay. Goodbye, Jerry.’

It wants to reach out, slap him on the shoulder, wish him good luck,—but he’s already off, making his way with squeaking steps towards the door. It sits there on the settee instead, a silhouette against the roiling light of the green sun, against the dividing wooden panes that creak and bend under its force, against a smoky face opening and closing its cold mouth and scraping fingernails against the glass, compelling it to rip off its blindfold.

It ignores it, and watches Jerry’s back as he moves into the bluebeam instead. It watches him stop, stare at something beyond the blue for a few, long seconds, and then continue on.

Outside, in the hallway, a mother kneels on the cordovan rug and embraces her son. She strokes his hair and lets him cry into her shoulder. She consoles him.

‘…you need to fight the tide, because it won’t let up,—okay?’ she soothes into his ear. ‘You have a big, strong heart, I know you do, and you should never let anyone tell you otherwise. But these things,—these terrible things,—they require more than heart. They require will. They require intelligence, and resolve. Because change,—’ she thinks, for a moment, between his sobs, ‘—there is a quote, from a Greek philosopher. You know how much I respect them. He said, ‘Nothing endures but change.’ _Nothing endures but change_.’ She closes her eyes. ‘It is a hard truth,’ she says, a crack in her voice. ‘But I believe in you, and I believe in your ability to confront it. And we will always, _always_ be here to support you in that, okay? Okay?’

She pulls away, sliding her hands up from behind his neck and up to his hair. She pushes the strands away from his eyes and lifts his face.

‘Okay?’ she repeats. His cheeks are wet, beet-red, and the streaks of his tears like small waterfalls. He manages to look up at her, up at her eyes, between the blubbering.

‘I want to go home,’ he says, and collapses, again, into her shoulder.

A hand meets the rung of a wooden ladder. It pauses, grips it tight, as another reaches up to Jerry’s eyes and dries them with two burrowing swipes. He sighs, looks warily up the length,—and climbs.

But if he were to look back, back along the thinned bluebeam, back down the rug, he might have seen a mother’s stern face over the cusp of her son’s shoulder, frowning. Staring.

She hugs him tighter and closes her eyes.


	22. 12:59 – IX

## 12:59 – IX

  
| 

It is late evening under the green sun. The town of Brimmingstoke,—a tin-roofed, dirt-road blight on the patchwork landscape,—is concentrated by its glow. It appears, cosmically, as if our reader is viewing the sight through a high dynamic range long screenshot, the luminance bloomed to a range far greater than what is visible to the human eye and the exposure stretched to an eternal, permanent moment. By the shores of a long strait of brush lies an old manor framed with arches and gableboards. It is a painting upon the evening sky, but, certainly, an irregular one,—for it is moving.

In a second-storey window frets a shape between the curls of a curtain, tossing about the sheets of her daughter’s bed, peering down its side, under its length. She stands there, hands at her cheeks.

She rushes out of the room, her jaw stretched open in an inaudible scream.  
  
---|---  
  
We woke to the noise of everything. Everything, all at once. Collapsing. Colliding. Coalescing, into one. We heard birds, chirping. We heard gates, screeching, and rattling about on their axes, unoiled, unopened. We heard the sun and the moon.

What was the sound of our first heartbeat? Was it even? Was it soft, or hard? How much blood was pumping through our heart? What did our blood sound like?

Imagine our veins as an endless network of tributaries, and ourselves, the paddler. The blood is smooth, but occasionally, we hit a reef, and some riles up the hull of the boat and splashes lightly against our shins.

What colour is the blood? How close is this vein to the surface of our skin?

What colour is the sun? What colour is the moon?

 Suddenly, and because we were too focused on the sky to think about where we were going, we paddled one too many cycles close to the edge of a waterfall. We tipped, and fell. And as our boat was split and our neck snapped by the rocks, and as we plunged, head-first, into the deep, and our blood mixed with all the rest, we felt a pair of arms embrace us from behind and soothe a _hush_ , _hush_ into our ear.

“Hey, hey, Joycey,” he said. “It’s alright. I’m here with you.”

Our name was Joyce. Joyce Pearson.

|    
  
  
| 

Downstairs, in the billiards room, a father demonstrates to his son the mechanic of English. He enacts this, however, in a way most peculiar; following every instance of the manoeuvre, he curses and swipes his cue against the skirt of the table. This, naturally, gives significant distress to his son. The boy asks repeatedly whether he should have a try on the table, but he is met, repeatedly, with a near-contemptuous disregard for his presence and worth. He feels as if he is fading away into irrelevancy. What use is a son not respected by his father, after all? He gazes away into the fireplace.

It is at this moment that his mother comes rushing into the room, hysterical. She grabs her husband from behind, who jumps, and almost strikes her with the cue as he turns to face her. He asks her what she is so hysterical about. She stammers something about how their daughter is gone. He tells the crook of her neck that he feels her pain, and that she will be under her tree after the soonest available return voyage to England. She tells him that that isn’t it. He asks her, again, what has provoked her to act this way, and she tells him that their daughter has disappeared from her room. He stares into her eyes, searching for some trace of sick merriment or hysteria. But he sees her stare back at him, sees her frail attempts to compose herself through her tears, and comes to a conclusion.

Wait here, he says, as he grips his cue and strides toward the door. His wife exclaims his name, hand extended,—but he is already gone.  
  
We were standing in the middle of the street in a loose t-shirt and tracky dacks. The road stretched out before us, houses and pavement and misty lampposts on either side funnelling the chill night air onto our skin.

“I’m here with you,” he repeated.

We turned around, and he let go. He crouched there on the asphalt, in striped, baggy pyjamas, his arms resting on his legs and his lips strung in a loose, wearied smile. He wore a nightcap. His name was William Thomas Pearson, but we called him Dad.

“You were sleepwalking, Joycey,” Dad said. “Got up to get a glass of water, and your door was open.”

“Am I still sleeping?” we asked.

“No, no, sweetheart,” he chuckled. “Don’t think so.”

“Am I dreaming?”

He shook his head. “You’re awake. Just, y’know, probably a bit dazed.”

Whistle. Whistle. A sound like the whistle of a pan flute.

We turned around.

“Come on, Joycey.” Dad tapped at our arm. “This way back home.”

“How far did I walk?”

“Not so far. Come on.”

We stared down the street’s length, felt the whistle-wind push a gentle, sustained tone against our cheeks, and then followed Dad’s lead.

|    
  
  
| 

A near-adult holds on to a ladder with one hand and points a flashlight down the corridor with the other. He heard sounds downstairs. He is watching for someone.

A husband enters the light, cue in hand. Hey, the near-adult breathes cautiously, fingers clenching. Clock chimes. Arthur, the husband exclaims. He glares up the ladder, his stance predatory and his knuckles white from his grip on the cue. He shouts that he needs to come down. He shouts that he knows he has his daughter, and that he will come up, and that he is armed. Naturally, there is no response or otherwise act of conciliation from his servant in the attic, and whether this is because exclamations do not appear to travel in this manor or that his servant knows that he is not under possession of a single ballistic weapon is up to the interpretation of our reader. The husband, anyhow, is disturbed by this lack of response, and begins to climb. His shouts continue, but they grow less and less confident, as if the higher he climbs into his servant’s hovel the more of his energy is sapped. It seems he is now beginning to grasp, at least subconsciously, the potential danger of his situation.

The near-adult does not feel the husband’s presence as the two collide and merge, but he does hear it. It is a humming, low, and intrusive. It floods his ears, making them ring, making them want to bleed. And while he did not feel it as the husband climbed into him, he does as he climbs out. There is an urge, almost an instinct, to move with the man as he does, to press his palms into the wood with the same intensity, and rage, and fear, as he does. But he fights it. And once the husband climbs up and out of his reach, up into the attic, he climbs as well.

But his ears are still ringing.  
  
“It’s quiet,” we said. “No-one’s up.”

Dad turned to face us, the soles of his slippers sliding across the asphalt as he walked. He looked worried.

“It’s night-time, Joycey. Everyone’s asleep at night-time.”

“Okay,” we said.

He stretched out his hand, and we reached up, and took hold. His fingers squeezed our palm as he slowed to match our pace.

“Where are you taking me?” we asked.

He stopped, frowned, and studied us for a few moments. “Are you feeling alright, sweetheart?”

We felt his arm go taut, and stopped as well. “I’m okay.”

“Are you sure? Did something happen?”

“I think I had a bad dream,” we said. “But I’m okay.”

“You didn’t have anything strange?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“Nothing from the medicine cabinet like I told you?”

“I can’t reach up to that.”

“You could if you stood on a chair.”

“Then I’d fall.”

He tilted his head, smirked. “And would that ever stop you?”

“It would,” we said.

He stared at us as if we said something in a foreign language. We started back, unmoving, unflinching, our eyes as unblinking as the whistles of the wind.

“Alright,” he said. “You don’t seem much yourself tonight, Joycey, so for your safety…” He scooped us up by the back our neck and the behinds of our knees. “That comfy?”

“Neck is stinging a bit.”

“Well my arms aren’t made out of pillow, unfortunately, so this might have to do.” He gave a smile. “Hup to!”

And marched off.

|    
  
  
| 

Grip. Step. Grip. Step.

It is dark, further up the ladder. Smoky, and dark. He is unsure as to how long he has been climbing.

Grip. Step. Grip. Step.

But he climbs, anyway, because he knows his goal is near. Sometimes, it is only hope that sustains a man. For him, it is knowing. He knows his goal is near. He can feel it.

Grip. Step. Grip. Step.

In the wood. In his pores. In his eyes. In the air, he can feel it, because the air is humid and clings to his skin.

He thinks of nothing. Because he feels that up there, up this ladder, up into the highest point of this structure, is exactly that. Nothing. Nothing for him. Nothing, for him.

Grip. Step. Grip. Step. Grip.

His feet land, somehow, on cloth. Through the murk he sees a faint green light, and in front of that, three silhouettes relieved on a hanging tarp.  
  
We gazed up at him through lazed eyelids. His chin, his jaw, his mouth, nose and eyes—they were a concerned vignette against the cloudy sky. He looked back and glanced a grim smile.

“Has the sun always been green?” we asked.

“Okay, Joycey,” he said, affirming his grip.

“No, no, I’m not kidding.”

“I know. That’s what worries me.”

“It’s just…” We frowned. “I dreamed something else. Where I was canoeing, and it was this river of blood, and then I looked up and the sun was red.”

He sighed, focused over to the side of the street. The wind whistled at our toes and licked at our hair, but it was quieter, now.

“I don’t know if the river was actually made of blood,” we said, “or if it only looked that way because the sun was red.”

“Maybe it was the moon. Y’know, a blood moon.”

“Does that matter?”

He gripped our knees a bit harder. “Well the sun isn’t red, Joycey.”

“Do you think,” we proposed, “maybe the sun was red, first. And then something happened, and it turned green. And it stayed that way.”

He was silent.

|    
  
  
| 

Step. Step. Step.

His steps sound muffled on the cloth underneath his shoes, and yet, they are sharp in the silence. He squints his eyes,—sees nothing but the light. He squints his ears,—hears nothing beyond the cloth. No wood. No squeak. And yet, there is a rattling deep inside the attic, deep within the source of the light. It is, of course, the very sight and sound of the green sun.

The near-adult reaches out towards it. His hands are invisible in the pitch excepting his fingers, which he is able to see as shadows as they block out the light. He stretches them, brings them to his eyes. No matter how close they are, even as they nearly touch the gel, he is unable to see anything but shadow.

He hears voices now. They waver along the must, reverberated in some places and compressed in others, but always, always distant. The tones reach the lobes of his ears, but never the drums.

Step. Step. Step.

Something coarse and perforated wraps about the near-adult’s face, and with haste, he tears it off. There is a hoarse noise as if a crocodile had snapped its jaws overhead, and he finds himself holding a loose, crusty tarp of uncertain description. He throws it down among the cloth, but after taking three more steps forward, is wrapped about the face again. He tears this one down, and another, and soon discovers that with each new tarp thrown, the light ahead, which is being filtered through the weave, grows brighter.

He sets forward, again, with new determination.  
  
“Here we are. I’m going to put you down now, do you think you’ll be ‘right?”

“Yep.”

“Alright. Just be careful.”

Dad kneeled, then slid his arms across so that he had us propped up by the armpits. He let us down gently on the deck.

“You sure you’re good?” he asked.

“I’m good.”

“Okay. I’m right here, so don’t worry.”

We open our mouths to say something snarky, but think better of it.

He frowned. “Are you alright?”

“I’m alright,” we exasperated.

“Are you thirsty? I’ll get you a cup of water.”

“No, I’m—”

“I’ll be right back. Stay right here.” He twisted the knob and cracked open the door. “No peeking,” he winked, and slid inside, into the dark. Before he closed the door, though, we did peek. We stood on our tippy-toes, craned our neck, and peeked inside. And peeking back at us, beyond the door, beyond Dad’s fade into shadow, was a flurry of bulbous, glossy eyes, hanging on roots in the dark.

We froze as the door shut behind him. There were eyes. We didn’t imagine it. Eyes, like the shiny globes of a ventriloquist’s dummy. Mum was home, but unless she had suddenly transformed into some true-form arachnid abomination, then—

A sort-of growl sliced up our throat. We need to stop trying to be funny. Our legs turned us around and away from the door. We need to be genuine. Our heart beat against our ribs. We need to change, for him. For us, and him.

_No peeking_.

We spun around, looked back at the door, through the glass block window striped with green flashing tape. He would be back any second. We could hear him, coming down the hall, drink in hand among the eyes, jeans rustling.

We spun again and took off down the steps.

Our dashing feet against the weed-split tiles: they sounded hollow in the night air. They hit the paving with a smack, then, like a handball, the sound bounced against the walls of our house and the roofs of others down the street, and then came, gradually, to a hopping stop. We focused down that road’s length again. The whistling was still there, not as prominent, but, somehow with that distance, clearer. It was not the whistle of a pan flute, we realised, but the blow of a bottle. We squinted. There was something at the end. Not a spot of light, but a lighter spot. It had a rim that twisted the space about it, like a thin fisheye lens.

“Joyce!” came his voice from back on the deck. We ran faster, our legs taking us not down the road but around the side of our front garden. The tiles gave way to something sharper against our bare feet. Gravel. We seethed, our toes curling, then splaying. We weren’t looking where we were going, but when we reached the shed we swung the tin door open as if it was our destination all along. It made a horrible screeching noise as it opened, but we didn’t care to notice. Hands shaking, we slammed the door shut, and backed away, into the darkness.

It was a garden shed, small and shelf-lined, mainly for tools and other equipment. Not big enough for more than one or two, to our dismay. We remembered wanting something bigger around this age, somewhere we could invite the friends we didn’t really have, and sit on old couches, and talk, and eat hot chips from the pizza place on main street that closed up a couple years later. That’s not too much to ask, surely, we told Dad. But he was drinking that night, and after the vague slurs about money and that bitch and sorry, Joycey, we were too uncomfortable to press the subject any further.

We curled up into a foetal position at the back of the shed against a shelf. We were only dimly aware of the rusty garden fork behind us, poking out, ready to prick our neck if we shuffled any further backward.

“Joyce!” came his voice again. We heard its stress, its worry, and our heart sunk. “Joyce!” We planted our head in our hands, twisted our hair in knots. Then we stood up, and before we could open the door, he opened it for us.

“ _Joyce_ ,” he gasped as we run up to him. “What—”

We hugged him. “I’m sorry,” we said. “I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

“What’s gotten _into_ you?” he asked and hugged us back.

“I know, I don’t know, I just—” Tears rolled down our cheeks. We were tall enough, now, old enough, to cry into his shoulder. “I don’t want to lose you again.”

“Oh, Joycey,” he whispered and tightened his grip.

“I’m just, scared that—” we sniffed “—when I’m not looking at you, you’re going to disappear. Or, or if I’m looking at you from across the street, your hands won’t have the same wear, and, and the lines, and your face will be all flat and monochrome and meaningless and—”

“Joycey. Joycey,” he soothed. “Shhh.” He rubbed our back, up and down, up and down. The sound of his fingers against the cloth was comforting, somehow. “You don’t have to worry, about any of that. I’m here with you, okay? I’m here with you.”

“Okay.” We sniffed. “Okay.”

|    
  
  
| 

The air is colder, closer to the light, and the cloth damper. Our near-adult, if he were to take a moment from his blinding resolve to look at the space about him, would notice that there are rafters extending from the floor to the angled, shadowed roof, illuminated by the light of the green sun. He would see, also, the mechanism by which the tarps are hanging: brushed steel hooks connected to rustling chains, swung down in droves from the dark above.

There are voices, if he were to listen. Voices of the tarp-silhouettes. They tell a story.

A husband preys with cue in hand, his stance at once predatory and discountenanced. His face, though hidden in a brief shadow of the light, is assuredly a snarling one, for the exclamations being thrown from his mouth are dripping from saliva,—and discomfort,—and misery. He dares not strike his cue, however. He wields it, against his will, only as a warning to his opponent; a threat that if he dares misstep or lose his grip, he will loose his spear and take out an eye. For his opponent has placed a barrier in his path: the corpse of a child, stiff as a plank of wood, held up to his shoulder and close to his head. Her eyes are as shut as a beautiful porcelain doll. Her cheeks are as bleached.

The husband shouts for her to be let down.

His opponent stares back, eyes glistening in the light, stance hardened, resolute, his grip still iron on the child.

The husband again shouts for her to be let down, but this time, his voice breaks, and he swings out with the cue. It misses, gravitates towards the other silhouette, the one under the light. A shape like a draping cable snatches out from the form, tries to latch on. It only slips against its lacquered surface, though, before it releases its grip and falls back, lazy and corkscrew-like, down into the mass.

Be careful, warns the servant. You need to stand back.

The husband demands, for perhaps the third time, to know why he is doing what he is doing.

The servant, naturally, does not respond.

Step. Tear. Step. Tear.

Our near-adult is growing close now. A few more steps, a few more tears, until he reaches the light. His hands are growing numb from the constant reaching and tearing. In fact, if he were to take a moment to acknowledge himself, he would find that his entire body is losing its sensation. But he is too busy, too distracted, with that light and the form below, with the draping cables and the blinking cathode tubes.

Step. Tear. Step. Tear.

Step,—tear.

He breaks through.  
  
The walk back to the deck was one of silence and consideration. There was absolutely no breeze, and the bottle-blowing of before was faraway, thinned, and unimportant. We barely even heard the rustle of the gravel. Instead, we gripped Dad’s hand with our fingers and our thumb. We rubbed against his palm and felt the lines; we listened, and heard the wear. There was substance there. Texture. It felt real.

The wood of the deck creaked under our feet.

“Alright,” sighed Dad, “I suppose I should let you know now, given, well—” he motioned to us up and down “—y’know.”

We remembered, suddenly, the hanging, luminescent eyes beyond the door, and our heart grew cold.

“Dad—” we started.

“I planned a surprise party,” he said. Gave a grim smile. “To celebrate you, here—and your birthday, obviously.”

Something about our expression caused him to hesitate, and his mouth to drop a little.

“ _Obviously_ , it’s not any kind of surprise anymore, now that I’ve told you. But if you weren’t such a ditz tonight, I wouldn’t have had to.” He grinned and swiped our arm.

“A surprise party?” we asked.

He nodded. “—Yeah.”

“But we don’t know anyone.”

“We know plenty.”

“Who did you invite?”

“Weeeelll,” he drawled, “a lot of people. Come in and see.”

He squeaked open the door, letting it swing until it rested against the doorstop. The eyes peered out over his shoulder, under the baggy nightgown fabric of his armpit—unblinking, untwitching. They peered out at us.

“Come on,” he said, gesturing. He moved into the pitch, and close behind, we followed.

There was humming. Not _a_ humming, but several discrete _hums_ , radiating from further within the room. We quickly realised that their source was the eyeballs.

“So, I…” He looked around, saw us stood behind his back, our curled fingers at our lips. “Come on Joycey, don’t be afraid.” He patted our back, and we hovered next to him instead. “I thought about who I would invite. Went down the list, y’know. But I thought—hey, you’re turning 18. Why choose, y’know? Why not just get…” He flicked on the light. “Everyone.”

“Oh my god.”

Our toes dug into the carpet and our heart pounded in our ears.

“Hey?” He was grinning. “Yeah? So I was thinking you’d come in here from the manor, thinking—hey—y’know—he’s probably got some chocolate cake from Coles, with a couple candles and a lighter. But then you come in here, and you flick on the light, and there’s Brimmingstoke. Right in front of you. The entire town, right in our house. Right here, down to the point. Even got Lachie. I know you’ve been pining for him a while, so I got him.”

We felt the fibres beneath our feet. They were hard, and rough in the webbing. Coagulated. Sticky.

“So, hey. D’you like it? What’d’you think?”

We tore ourselves away to look at him. His smile stretched up to the creases of his eyes, in which there was a light we’d never seen. Bright, sparkling. We lowered our arm stutteringly to our side, and realised, as it moved equally so in the reflection, that the light was us. It was ourselves.

He smiled away to the crowd of everyone, and we looked the direction opposite, out the door. It was evening. Colourful balloons floated statically from the gatepost in the rapidly thinning breeze, and beyond them, down the one-point perspective street, was another light, shining and true, brimming with the colour of poppy flowers. The red sun: it glowed brilliantly through the rim.

“Alright, everyone,” said Dad. “Everyone yell it out on my count.”

There was something else, too. A brown, spotted, irregular shape, clipping through the heavens. It interpolated with neither sound nor shadow.

“Three!” he exclaimed. “Two!”

With sweaty, shaking palms, we clasped his hand.

“One!”

There was the echoed, metallic sound of a plugging cork as it eclipsed the sun, and our mouth snapped open.

 “Happy birthday!” we screamed. ∗

| 

The light. It is blinding and free,—twisting, twirling,—spiralling into his eyes like the curl of a screw. The attic is not so much imbued by its glow as our near-adult’s eyes are consumed,—devoured,—by it, to the stalk. Green. Green. A navy-green, if our reader can imagine it; a darker green, with lighter spells tossed throughout like a soup of chlorophyll and juiced lime. Green. The green sun.

He stumbles forward, still reaching for something to grab and tear down. He finds nothing except more colour,—his hands are once again shrouded in the shade,—but he keeps reaching, because there is something to tear.

More voices, the same as those previous, the ones our near-adult is unable to hear. One shouting, one low and shuddering. Both desperate. Both desire.

If he were to feel, he would feel, in the green, as he did previously on the rungs of the ladder, the steps of the husband as he moves his way around the machine. He would feel the cue lunge again. He would feel the handle stammer as it hits dead flesh and falls. He would feel the man’s heartbeat holt and his lungs take a sharp breath as a needle takes blood, and, as the cue falls, he would feel fingers grip about his neck, pinch, and dig nails. English blood would trickle down his throat.

He is crawling, now. His fingers claw at the fibres of the tarp, dig deep into the slats of the boards beneath. It is wet under there, and the further his fingers grip, the harder they stick.

But he keeps moving, and, at long last, reaches the object.

There is a darker shape in the green. A shadow. Deep within, he knows, there is darkness, and more darkness,—a sawcut hallway of shadow,—and beyond even that, the heart of the machine.

If he were to look to his rough right, he would see, glistening with a dull red through the shade, the body of a child among bottles of alcohol, cheeks bleached, a captured light in her open eyes, and a circular, bruiseless rim on the side of her neck.

If he were to listen, he would hear the grunts and the breathless gasps of a husband and servant, fighting to pierce each other’s neck, itching to draw blood.

If he were to feel, he would feel the husband crash into him and topple over the edge of the machine, tendrils piercing through his fingers and his throat, slithering through his tongue up into both nostrils, and then, finally, out through the pupils of his twitching eyes into one sparking whipping tail as he thinks of spring and flowers and youths in a garden.

But he doesn’t. And so, with a hand, he reaches into the shadow, his nails scraping along the circuitboard sides, his palms gripping, squeezing—

Truth or struth, she asks.  
  
  
| 

…

The sequined night, and those liquorice stars spread across the velvet making dents in the creases. Not many colours, tonight. There is the cherry—always, there is the cherry—and there are the others, scattered about it. The little blue jelly buttons, glittering mildly in the dark.

 Actually, no, she says, yawning. It’s your turn.

He asks if she is tired.

She shoots back, telling him that he needs to say truth or struth first.

He says okay. Truth or struth, he says.

Struth, she replies, nonchalant.

He blinks, rubs his eyes. He tilts his neck to the side to look over at his friend.

Okay, he says. What now?

You ask a question, she says.

He says he gets that. He asks if he does anything different.

 Why, she says, yawning again, why would you?

Because you said struth, he says.

She says so what.

_So_ , he says, flinging his arms up into the air, there’s two options.

She says so what.

So it needs to be different, he exclaims. Duh.

She says that she never said they were different. She says they sound pretty much the same anyway.

He half groans, half cries out in pain, and lets his arms fall. His elbow hits the concrete. Ow, he says.

She laughs. Damn dude, she says. Didn’t realise you were so invested.

He mumbles that he kind of was.

Maybe, she says, clearing her throat, it’s like, you say it in a kind of Aussie accent.

He asks what she means.

It’s like, she says, y’know—if you picked struth, say, then I’d ask a question like, _Aw_ —

she laughs

— _Aw, mate!_ she says. _What’s—what’s your favourite colour, mate? Aw, struth!_

This is terrible, he says, grinning. This is really terrible.

But, she says, then laughs again—but right?

No, he says. It’s over.

She covers her mouth to muffle her laughter.

You’ve ruined me, he says. Laughs.


	23. 1

## 1

Falls. Off the ladder, arms wrapped and knees curled up to his chest. Blood on his clothes. Blood on his face. He hits the rug like a paintball that can twist and writhe as a worm does out of earth. His arms still wrap to his chest, but his knees and his legs unfold to let him stand with a stability undermined by an unease—a swaying—as a worm twists and writhes out of earth, or a bipedal robot struggles on rough terrain.

 _Step! Step!_ Stumble. His legs try to collapse under him, but he tenses them—holds on. He wraps his arms tighter.

The hallway pulses about him. It beats, like a heart. He can’t tell whether the veins on the ceiling and the blood creeping down the walls, and the hanging china, and the white bust at the end of the hallway are a product of his bloodshot eyes, or are, as of now, a facet of the reality he now finds himself in. Even with it held to his chest he doesn’t know. But it’s the wrong one, isn’t it? Maybe if he goes down into the kitchen pantry, fumbles around for the source of that blue light—

An arm smelling faintly of liquorice wraps around his shoulders. His legs try to collapse again and his flesh nearly manages to tear out of his skin—but the arm supports him; gives him tether. The pulses are less enveloping now. More distant. He can breathe. The air smells cuttingly of iron, like a BO roiling under a layer of perfume.

The arm speaks. The things it says: they are wavering, underneath. Emotional. But they are filtered through a lens of cold, metallic air, injecting in them a careless, leering ambivalence that our near-adult does not care to hear.

 _Step! Step!_ Grip.

Wavering, floating perception. He grips the wood banister for balance, but the arm releases his hold by the wrist and drops his hand at his side. There is a hurried nature in its movements now. It wants him to keep moving. He gets the impression that if he doesn’t—if he pauses, now, to rest his legs—the manor will come melting down about him and everything will be swallowed whole. He keeps moving.

_Bang! Bang! Bang!_

Three knocks from the fists of a seamonster unleashed in the kitchen. They are ever-clear in the reception hall.

_Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!_

Plates smashing against drywall. Stovepots denting linoleum. A kitchen counter unrooted, torn in two, then flung spinning and unspooling against double doors. Bang. Bang. Bang.

He makes his way to the vestibule. The chandelier seems smaller, now. He might wonder how it ever fit up there in the first place, when it was that big. Its arms shrink away from him as the arm atop his shoulders pushes him forward.

He opens the front door and three things happen.

First is the crashing sound. The boom from the kitchen, as a counter smashes again against those double doors, and this time, breaks through.

Second is the blue light. The light of the blue moon, spilling through, collapsing, like a thousand dead cells liquefied.

Third is the white sheet, rustling, falling lightly on his shoulders as something wooden and straw clatters to the boards behind him. He tries to shrug it off, but it doesn’t budge. Clutching his chest with one arm and reaching carefully out to the sheet with the other, he pulls, and his arm is caught; there’s a gaping hole in the fabric (one of two) that has coiled itself about his elbow. So he falls, out the door, teeth grit and white cape dangling.

 As he half-stumbles, half-rolls down the pocked yard, he catches glimpses of flickering, ghostly projections descending with him. An old mother and her son holding hands, running in old, old attire. The child turns his head—it’s a stuttering, wiping turn—and appears to stare back at him, tears making jittering silkworms in the air. She doesn’t, though. She keeps running. She pulls his arm harder. There is nothing worth looking back to, apparently. Nothing else to save.

Do you see now? Do you? Don’t you?

The gate opens smoothly under his blood-caked hand. It sweeps along the weeds, bends them until they’re almost sprung, and he squeezes through the crack.

Sirens shouting. No—sirens spearing, and shouts, barking, exploding ‘round his ears. People rushing from the four corners in nightgowns and boxers and early uniform, with faces of surprise, or horror, or sleep-shrouded ambivalence. He sees them, lets down his guard, and there’s a rip from his elbow as the cape catches underneath his feet. He trips, and falls. And he lays there sprawled on the asphalt, sheet scarred and hands pulsing at his chest. Someone comes over, shouting something. They step over him, up to the curb, and fall out of eyesight.

He blinks up at a bleeding sky filtered silver-blue by the moonlight. The thing at his chest wheezes and puffs. It splurts blood that runs down his jacket and drips into the weeds. He gets up, stumbles forward, away from the sedan. He walks the highway.

It’s not a long walk—but the pavement is hard and cold under his shoes, and the wind strewn by the gaze of the blue moon is biting at his back. He falls, eventually; plods on his knees with his hands at his chest; and then the wind sweeps him, and he takes flight. It's icy air all about him—water droplets soaking his skin—clouds—and he breathes in his beard, and his starry eyes, and the algae; he flies; and he falls, down into the grass. He crawls on hand and knees toward the light as dew pools in his fingers, almost stands, but slips. It’s pumping faster now. Blood gushes down his arm and into the hollow of his elbow, slicks his jacket and stains his jeans. He grips the back wheel of the sedan to let himself rest against its length. He blinks. He watches.

Joyce and Jerry, two very-nearly adults—two former good friends; they stand embracing in the headlamps under leaves streaming.

“Happy early birthday,” he offered. “You’ll have to remind me when; my, uh, phone clock’s an hour early.”

Joyce smirked. “Thanks, dude.” She laughed—pursed her lips. She shut her eyes, after a moment, and rubbed his back to the near-evening birds that chirp, now, in the darkness. “Missed you.”

It pumps, pumps—pumps. It shrivels—curls up in his fingers as the light flickers away. He drops his head against the sedan and the scratch of metal echoes far, echoes distant, as the breath of the streaming leaves is distant, now, and how far away does the blood feel as it trickles down his wrist, and how dark is all the world except for his own eyes.

They blink, twitch—contract. They flutter, fall—and close. ∗


	24. Afterword and Full Credits

## Afterword

Thanks for reading. Critique is very, very appreciated. Leave a comment or get in touch at [@snarlinger](https://twitter.com/snarlinger).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>   * Initial quote taken from [_A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson_](http://setis.library.usyd.edu.au/ozlit/pdf/p00044.pdf) by Watkin Tench.
>   * Joyce's avatar modified from a photo taken by [Shiftchange](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Shiftchange) of [Wikipedia](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Powerlines_and_bushland_Loganlea_Queensland_Australia.jpg).
>   * Voice chat icon in Chapter 9 was taken from [www.flaticon.com](https://www.flaticon.com/free-icon/speakers_263050#term=speaker&page=1&position=36). It was made by [Freepik](https://www.flaticon.com/authors/freepik).
>   * The story Arthur reads to Minnie is _The Wind Tells About Waldemar Daa and His Daughters_ by Hans Christian Andersen. The excerpt is taken from [_What the Moon Saw: And Other Tales_](https://archive.org/details/whatmoonsawother00andeiala), specifically the 1866 edition translated by Henry William Dulcken.
> 



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